Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and 
Browning 

A  STUDY  IN  HUMAN  FREEDOM 


BY 
SOLOMON  F.  GINGERICH,  A.M.,  Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR   IN   ENGLISH   IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 


GEORGE  WAHR,  Publisher 

ANN   ARBOR,    MICH. 
I9II 


Copyright 

Solomon  F.   Gingerich 

1911 


^^        /gCtZt^e^h^ 


\ 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

For  the  material  on  Wordsworth  in  this  book  I  have 
borrowed  with  absolute  freedom  from  a  volume  I  pub- 
lished on  Wordsworth  a  few  years  ago. 

It  is  well  nigh  impossible  for  me  to  Indicate  my  in- 
debtedness to  the  many  writers  on  the  poets  here  treated. 
I  shall  only  say  that  my  indebtedness  to  them  is  great. 
For  direct  personal  help  in  preparing  and  revising  the 
manuscript,  and  reading  proof,  I  wish  to  express  my 
'thanks  to  Professors  I.  N.  Demmon  and  Louis  A.  Strauss 
of  the  University  of  Michigan. 

S.  F.  G. 


rfi05^22 


CONTENTS 

Introduction   9 

CHAPTER  I. 
Wordsworth  and   His  Times 31 

CHAPTER  n. 
Wordsworth :  Memory  and  Will 48 

CHAPTER  HI 
Wordsworth :    Freedom  and  Mysticism 74 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Wordsworth :  Art  and  Freedom 96 

CHAPTER  V. 
Tennyson  and  His  Times 1 13 

CHAPTER  VI. 
Tennyson  :    Memory  and  the  Mystic  Element 129 

CHAPTER  VII. 
Tennyson  :   Freedom  and  Law 146 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
Tennyson  :     Art  and  Law 165 


8  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Browning  and   His  Times 176 

CHAPTER  X. 
Browning :  Passion  and  Will 192 

CHAPTER  XI. 
Browning:  Freedom  and  Transcendentalism 211 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Browning :  Art  and  Liberalism 235 

Conclusion 247 

Appendix  255 


INTRODUCTION 

The  spirit  of  freedom  is  a  treasure  of  inestimable 
price  to  the  human  mind.  Everywhere  and  at  all  times 
the  love  of  freedom  asserts  itself — politically,  socially, 
but  most  of  all,  individually.  But  our  individual  free- 
dom, which  underlies  social  and  political  freedom,  has  its 
roots  directly  in  the  will.  And  the  experience  of  the  will 
— the  act  of  striking  an  attitude,  of  choosing  an  alterna- 
tive, of  meeting  a  situation  with  an  undivided  self,  which 
gives  a  positive  sense  of  freedom — this  is  the  thing  in  us 
that  is  most  distinctively  and  intimately  human.  Since 
this  experience  is  human  and  universal,  and  since  poets 
are  wont  to  deal  with  things  human  and  universal,  it 
were  strange  if  they  did  not  reflect  in  their  work  a  sense 
of  will  and  a  spirit  of  freedom.  They  do  so,  and  they 
"awaken  in  us  a  wonderfully  full,  new,  and  intimate 
sense"  of  these  qualities. 

The  poet's  method  of  appealing  to  the  sense  of  will 
is  most  often  indirect,  but  if  the  poet  be  of  a  volitional 
type,  as  \\'ordsworth,  or  Browning,  he  sometimes  appeals 
to  it  directly.  When  he  does  so,  his  poefry  may  impress 
us  as  declamatory  rather  than  poetic.  The  objection, 
however,  is  not  to  the  volitional  appeal,  but  to  the  bald- 
ness of  the  method  of  expression.  More  often  the  appeal 
is  veiled  in  metaphor,  and  may  be  finely  poetic.  For 
instance,  the  line, 

'"Cased  in  the  unfeeling  armour  of  old  time,'" 

has  often  and  justly  been  praised  for  the  fineness  and 
originality  of  the  metaphor,  while  the  simple  beauty  and 
superior  power  of  the  line  just  preceding  it. 


'Wordsworth,  "Elegiac  Stanzas." 


lO  INTRODUCTION. 

"I  love  lo  see  ihe  look  with  which  it  braves," 

has  been  passed  by  unnoticed.  Here  the  volitional  ap- 
peal, veiled  by  the  slight  though  exquisite  figure  expres- 
sed in  look  and  braves,  is  poetic  and  effective.  We  are 
glad  that  the  castle  has  a  look  with  which  it  can  brave 
the  destroying  elements.  Its  heroism  unobtrusively 
takes  hold  of  us,  and  the  effect  is  bracing.  Most  often, 
however,  the  volitional  appeal  is  wholly  indirect,  and  lies 
in  the  texture  and  spirit  of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  such  a 
poem,  for  example,  as  the  "Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade." 
It  is  because  of  this  indirectness  of  the  volitional  ap- 
peal in  poetry  that  comparatively  little  has  been  written 
abqjat  it  in  literary  criticism. 

\  (Poetry  is  fundamentally  the  expression  of  personalit;^j^^> 
Ibut  tEe  central  and  most  important  element  in  personality 
is  the  will.  Where  there  is  a  weak  and  nerveless  will 
there  can  be  no  strong  and  rich  personality.  Where  there 
is  a  strong  will  and  a  noble  soul,  there  personality  abounds. 
The  human  will  is  beset  with  dangers — dangers,  for  in- 
stance, of  imperiousness  and  sterility; — but  when  these 
dangers  are  avoided  and  the  will  acts  normally,  it  em- 
bodies the  noblest  elements  of  the  human  mind  and  fur- 
nishes to  us  our  deepest  organ  of  response  to  the  truth 
of  things.  In  the  "Prelude"  and  in  the  "Excursion" 
Wordsworth  frequently  attests  to  the  sublimity  of  mind 
possessed  by  the  poor  and  those  in  the  common  walks 
of  life.  The  Leech-Gatherer  in  "Resolution  and  Inde- 
pendence" has  neither  knowledge  nor  culture,  and  is 
devoid  of  romantic  feelings.  What  he  does  possess,  how- 
ever, is  the  power  of  self-sustenance,  which  flouts  de- 
spair, which  bears  up  against  adversity,  and  which  turns 
sorrow  into  pleasure  and  contentment.  And  Wordsworth 
could  have  laughed  himself  to  scorn  to  find  "in  that  de- 


INTRODUCTION.  II 

crepit  man  so  firm  a  mind."  Far  more  than  we  are  con- 
scious of,  this  firmness  of  mind  resides  at  the  core  of 
human  personahty.* 

It  is  certain  that  purely  intellectual  conceptions  are 
of  less  importance  to  poetry  than  the  energy  of  will.  It 
has  been  said,  for  example,  that  "Paradise  Lost"  is  a 
monument  to  dead  ideas,  and  that  it  lacks  human  inter- 
est. The  first  part  of  this  count  may  perhaps  be  accepted, 
but  hardly  the  second.  No  doubt  Milton's  theological 
ideas,  as  ideas,  are  of  little  interest  to  us,  but  the  vast 
volitional  energy  stored  up  in  the  poem  makes  it  genu- 
inely human.  Its  imaginative  sublimity  is  the  natural 
and  harmonious  outgrowth  of  a  volitional  personality. 
This  poem  is  "the  precious  life-blood  of  a  master  spirit," 
the  song  of  a  man  with  sword  begirt  to  do  mighty  battle,  a 
man  who,  "with  danger  compassed  round,"  sang  with 
"mortal  voice  unchanged  to  hoarse  or  mute."  The  human 
interest  in  the  poem  lies  in  the  indomitable  energy  of  its 
creator's  mind,  and  not  in  its  intellectuality.  The 
energy  of  will,  closely  bound  up  with  personality, 
is  a  more  vital  force  in  poetry  than  intellectual  concep- 
tion s.f 

There  are  indefinable  elements  in  the  will ;  and  since 
this  is  so  it  is  impossible  to  give  a  complete  or  accurate 
definition  of  it.  We  can  proceed  with  sufficient  clearness, 
however,  by  considering  what  is,  so  to  speak,  the  raw 
material  of  which  it  is  made,  and  by  giving  a  partial  defi- 
nition. The  lower  ground  work  of  our  will  lies  in  our  phys- 
ical reflexes,  our  impulses  and  instincts,  our  sensations 
and  crude  perceptions,  in  the  clash  between  converging 
physical  desires,  in  the  unformed  subconscious  tendencies 


*See  Note  i,  Appendix, 
t  See  Note  2,  Appendix. 


I  a  INTRODUCTION. 

in  us,  vaguely  pulling  us  hither  and  thither,  in  the  oc- 
casional emergence  into  consciousness  of  this  welter  of 
unformed  matter.  This  mass  of  experience  furnishes 
the  lower  content  and  outer  material  for  the  will,  and 
brings  it  to  the  very  door  of  the  outer  and  nonconscious 
world ;  yet  this  does  not  constitute  the  will  itself.  On  a 
higher  level  the  material  of  our  will  consists  in  the  con- 
flict of  our  desires  other  than  the  physical,  in  our  higher 
aspirations  and  longings,  in  the  conflict  both  of  our  pas- 
sions and  of  our  knowledge  regarding  things  prudential, 
ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious.  These  things,  again,  do 
not  constitute  the  will;  they  form  the  inner  and  higher 
material  for  the  will.  The  will  itself  is  an  independent, 
self-directing,  self-developing,  but  otherwise  indefinable 
power  in  us — (it  requires  a  pure  act  of  believing  and  not 
at  all  of  knowing  to  accept  this  statement) — which  lies 
back  of  the  things  that  have  been  described  as  the  mater- 
ial upon  which  it  works.  This  material  is  conditioned  by 
heredity  and  environment,  but  behind  it  there  is  an  in- 
crement of  will,  however  small,  that  is  absolutely  inde- 
pendent of  heredity  and  environment ;  else,  where  were 
the  freedom?  The  will  is  the  power  "existent  behind  all 
laws,"  that  makes  laws,  that  selects  and  arranges  and 
harmonizes  our  lower  impulses  and  our  higher  aspira- 
tions, our  passions  and  our  knowledge;  the  power  that 
organizes  and  unifies  our  personality.  The  will  thus  in 
its  inmost  circle  ranges  over  the  whole  gamut  of  con- 
scious life — from  the  physical  to  the  transcendental,  from 
the  natural  to  the  mystical,  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite, 
from  the  lowest  physical  desire  to  the  highest  and  finest 
essence  of  spirit  in  us  that  can  give  rise  to  conscious 
aspirations. 

But  there  are  those  who  do  not  consider  the  will  to 
have  this  self-directing  and  self-developing  power,  who 


INTKOdL'CTION.  13 

deny  the  freedom  of  the  human  will.  Such  hold  that 
consciousness  is  a  mere  cerebration  of  cells,  the  product 
of  a  materialistic  evolution,  and  that  freedom,  so-called, 
is  an  illusion,  a  product  of  man's  foolish  fancies.  Poets, 
however,  like  religionists,  almost  unanimously  take  for 
granted  the  existence  of  man's  freedom.  They  hold 
implicitly  that  there  is  in  consciousness  a  power  inde- 
pendent of  heredity  and  environment,  and  that  this 
power,  deep  in  the  heart  of  man,  gives  man,  in  all  ages 
and  under  all  circumstances,  an  everlasting  assurance  of 
freedom.  However  strongly  St.  Paul  may,  when  his 
logical  faculty  is  active,  reason  about  predestination,  it 
is  quite  evident  that  "whosoever  will"  is  the  watchword 
written  over  the  whole  face  of  the  Hebrew  scriptures, 
including  for  the  most  part  the  writings  of  St.  Paul  him- 
self ;  and  perhaps  in  the  advice  of  Tennyson,  at  the  close 
of  the  poem  "De  Profundis,"  that  we  should  attempt  to 
find 

Nearer  and  ever  nearer  Him,  who  wrought 

Not  matter,  nor  the  finite-infinite, 

But  this  main-miracle,  that  thou  art  thou, 

With  power  on  thine  own  act  and  on  the  world — 

perhaps  in  this  advice  there  is  an  expression  of  what  lies 
very  close  to  the  inner  core  of  all  high  poetic  truth.  It  is 
not  for  the  poets  to  argue  the  theory  of  freedom ;  and 
Milton  in  "Paradise  Lost"  and  Chaucer  in  "Troilus  and 
Criseyde"  make  sorry  work  of  it  when  they  attempt  the 
argument.  But  it  is  of  inestimable  importance  to  the 
poet's  work  that  it  hold  implicitly  the  theory  of  freedom 
and  awaken  in  us  an  intimate  sense  of  the  spirit  of  free- 
dom. 

The  first  and  simplest  reason  why  the  poet  usually 
assumes  the  principle  of  freedom  in  his  work  is  that  the 
assumption  is  implied  in  the  conduct  and  in  the  practical 


14  INTRODUCTION'. 

beliefs  of  all  men.  True  poetry  alvva3'S  has  the  roots 
of  its  growth  imbedded  in  the  soil  of  common  experience. 
Poetry  deals  most  generally  with  personal  experience, 
and  with  the  instincts,  feelings,  and  volitions  of  men. 
Whatever  else  a  great  poetry  may  deal  with,  it  deals  first 
of  all  with  the  abiding  and  universal  experiences  of  the 
heart  and  mind  and  soul — with  the  whole  life  of  man. 
Life,  it  has  been  urged  by  various  and  competent  critics, 
is  the  proper  subject  matter  of  poetry.  But  three-fourths 
of  life,  it  has  been  said  upon  high  authority,  is  made  up 
of  conduct.  It  may,  however,  be  added  that  at  least 
three-fourths  of  conduct  consists  in  the  proper  exercise 
of  the  will.  And  thus  the  will — its  exercise,  its  power, 
its  freedom — is  a  good  half  of  life.  Nor  is  this  by 
any  means  an  overstatement  of  the  will's  importance  in 
the  every-day  experience  of  living.  It  is  an  understate- 
ment rather.  If  the  race  is  ever  going  to  be  saved, 
it  must  first  strongly  will  to  receive  salvation.  We  are 
in  a  constant  state  of  probation,  and  life  is  full  of  choices. 
We  are  forever  at  the  parting  ways — we  can  and  must 
choose  at  every  moment  between  alternatives,  either  great 
or  small,  momentous  or  trivial.  We  must  choose  be- 
tween reading  a  book  or  taking  a  walk,  between  wearing 
an  overcoat  or  carrying  an  umbrella,  between  vocation 
and  vocation,  truth  and  falsehood,  idealism  and  pessim- 
ism, religion  and  no  religion.  Each  choice  closes  up  that 
which  has  been  a  possibility  hitherto,  but  also  opens  up 
new  possibilities.  Now,  poetry  seizes,  more  powerfully 
than  science  or  philosophy,  upon  this  practical  phase  of 
life  and  renders  it  concretely,  and  thereby  purifies  and 
strengthens  our  powers  of  choice.  Lear  makes  his  choice 
imperiously  at  the  opening  of  the  play,  and  the  conse- 
quences of  it  are  mercilessly  followed  out  through  his 
whole  career.     The  Satan  of  "Paradise  Lost"  makes  of 


INTKODUCTIOX.  I5 

necessity  a  virtue,  declares  it  is  better  to  reign  in  Hell 
than  serve  in  Heaven,  and,  by  choosing  and  striving  to 
attain  this  ideal  and  by  exercising  an  unconquerable 
energy  of  will,  gathers  much  glory  unto  himself.  Certain 
it  is  that  the  assumption  of  the  will's  free  choice  has  not 
merely  a  speculative  interest  for  philosophers  but  has 
tremendous  issues  in  the  common  afifairs  of  life.  And 
since  the  p©et  keeps  his  ear  close  to  the  tlirobbing  heart 
of  humanity  he  assumes,  as  human  beings  practically 
assume,  the  freedom  of  the  will  to  be  one  of  the  funda- 
mentally true  things  both  in  his  faith  and  in  his  practice. 
Another  and  higher  reason — an  artistic  reason — why 
the  poet  does  not  find  himself  at  variance  with  the  prin- 
ciple of  freedom  but  embraces  it  as  the  law  of  his  life  is 
that  in  the  art  of  poetry,  as  in  kindred  arts,  the  highest 
function  of  the  artist  is  creation,  of  "widening  nature 
without  going  beyond  it,"  of  enlarging  the  sphere  of  life 
and  freedom.  We  demand  from  the  poet  enough  con- 
tact with  the  actual  to  make  us  sure  we  are  on  solid 
ground,  but  we  also  demand  new  idealizations  and  crea- 
tions that  seem  to  us  reasonable  and  worth  while.  The 
miracle  of  the  art  is  that  while  the  poet  makes  us  feel 
that  he  has  both  feet  planted  solidly  on  this  earth  and 
that  he  is  dealing  with  the  deepest  verities  of  actual  and 
concrete  experience,  the  poet's  pen  at  the  same  time 

Gives  to  airy  nothing 

A  local  habitation  and  a  name. 

This  is  what  Macaulay  calls  "the  art  of  employing  words 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  produce  an  illusion  on  the  imag- 
ination," and  the  truth  that  results  is,  for  Macaulay,  the 
"truth  of  madness."-    As  thougii  the  imagination  were  a 


'Essay,  "Milton." 


1 6  INTRODUCTION. 

faculty  easy  to  be  deceived,  and  as  though  all  other  kinds 
of  truth  except  common  sense  truth  were  madness !  No, 
the  imagination  sees  straight,  and  the  truth  it  finds  is  not 
the  truth  of  madness  but  of  creation.  Poetry  indeed  pro- 
duces an  illusion,  not  on  the  imagination,  but  on  com- 
mon sense.  Our  common  sense  ideas  find  expression 
by  means  of  our  logical  reason  in  forms  other  than  poetry. 
Our  feelings  and  volitions  find  expression  by  means  of 
imaginative  representation  in  poetry.  And  when,  in 
reading  poetry,  we  reach  a  certain  imaginative  intensity 
the  imaginative  representation  seems  illusory  to  the 
common  sense  element  in  us;  but  when  with  our  imagin- 
ation active  we  read  a  piece  of  scientific  writing  the  work 
seems  illusory  to  the  imagination.  The  one  strand  in 
us  may  thus  seem  unreal  to  the  other,  and  vice  versa. 
Common  sense  is  the  truth  of  our  habitual  matter-of- 
fact  reactions.  Imaginative  truth  is  the  truth  of  unusual 
moments  of  insight  and  creation, — a  divine  inspiration, 
as  Plato  calls  it.  And  in  this  highly  imaginative  and 
creative  process  the  poet  feels  that  he  is  in  a  world  where 
creation  is  still  going  on  and  that  he  is  a  participant  in  the 
act  itself.  He  feels  what  philosophers  sometimes  insist 
upon,  namely,  that  the  world  itself  is  still  in  the  process 
of  making,  as  it  has  been  ever  since  the  beginning 
of  time.  The  philosopher  arrives  at  this  idea  by  the- 
orizing about  it,  while  the  poet,  on  the  contrary,  feels 
its  truth  as  a  thing  in  his  immediate  experience,  to  which 
his  whole  passional  nature  gives  assent. 

The  poet's  experience  is  something  like  that  of  the 
musician  in  Browning's  "Abt  Vogler,"  who  finds  (seventh 
stanza)  there  is  in  the  moment  of  creation  a  will  behind 
all  laws  that  made  the  laws  themselves,  and  that  this  gift 
of  will  has  been  given  to  man,  who  therefore  can  frame 
out  of  three  sounds  "not  a  fourth  sound,  but  a  star," 


INTRODUCTION'.  I J 

that  is,  he  can  create.  Each  tone  in  our  scale,  he  says,  is 
a  very  common  thing — "it  is  every  where  in  the  world," 
— but  wiien  this  commonplace  tone  is  taken  and  mixed 
with  two  in  the  musician's  thought,  there  is  produced  an 
absolutely  new  thing — a  creation !  "Consider  and  bow 
the  head !"  In  order  to  heighten  the  conception  of  his 
own  art  the  musician  contrasts  his  own  achievement  with 
that  of  the  poet.  liis  own  art  is  above  law,  but  the  poet's 
is  "all  triumphant  art,  but  art  in  obedience  to  laws."  On 
the  basis  of  creation,  however,  the  two  arts  are  identical. 
And  in  their  highest  moments  of  inspiration  v^-e  claim 
for  the  poets  the  same  gift  that  Browning's  musician 
claims — the  gift  of  creation.  Since  the  poet  possesses 
this  gift,  he  becomes  conscious  of  the  power  of  spiritual 
energy  and  spiritual  freedom  in  the  universe,  of  the  fact 
that  he  himself  possesses  a  will  "existent  behind  all 
laws"  that  has  the  power  to  inform  and  to  create.  And 
he  knows,  therefore,  in  his  own  person  the  truth  of  the 
freedom  of  his  will. 

To  state  this  truth  in  physiological  terms,  the  poet 
in  his  higher  inspirations  and  in  the  act  of  creation  lives 
in  that  region  of  his  brain  that  is  plastic,  as  yet  unformed 
— free.  Here  are  not  many  obstructions  in  the  way  of 
pre-existent,  habitual  reflexes.  Here  is  nothing  of  those 
few  simple  and  treadmill  operations  of  t!ie  mind  char- 
acteristic of  the  matter-of-fact  persons  who  seem  not  to 
know  their  capability  of  alternative  choices.  But  here 
the  mind,  lifted  as  by  inspiration  above  these  treadmill 
operations,  by  one  element  of  its  power,  perception,  dips 
down  into  them  and  seizes  upon  common  and  matter-of- 
fact  experience  as  a  solid  base  upon  which  to  rear  its 
structure ;  and  by  the  other  element  of  its  power,  imagina- 
tion, penetrates  the  cloudland  of  the  unknown  and  flashes 
forth,  by  its  own  lightnings,  unexpected  vistas  of  hither- 


1 8  INTRODUCTION. 

to  unknown  and  uncreated  truth — truth  charged  with  the 
thunder  roll  of  new  harmonies  and  new  melodies.  Thus 
the  brain,  drawing  its  material  from  two  opposite  poles 
of  our  experience,  "adverse,  each  from  the  other  heaven- 
high,  hell-deep  removed,"  shoots  together  new  combina- 
tions of  truth — sometimes  ingenious,  sometimes  start- 
ling, sometimes  with  a  vast  economy  and  compression  of 
experience,  but  always  radiant  with  new  born  heavenly 
light  and  always  drenclied  with  the  stuff  reported  by 
the  senses,  fresh  from  tlie  v.orkl  of  fact  and  actualit}'. 
Here  is  God's  plenty  by  way  of  evidence  that  the  brain 
in  its  higher  rounds  is  plastic  and  the  will  free.  To  doubt 
now  is  impertinence.  It  is  onl}^  wdien  the  heavy-handed 
philosopher,  for  intellectual  and  logical  reasons,  demands 
that  through  a  chain  of  causations  each  act  must  have 
had  a  sufficient  preceding  impingement,  and  that  this  im- 
pingement must  have  had  a  cause  farther  back,  and  so 
forth  ad  infinitum,  that  the  question  of  freedom  is  at  all 
attacked.  When  one's  head  is  in  an  attitude  to  enjoy  pure 
logic  and  is  anxious  for  logic-chopping,  it  is  always  safe 
to  take  the  side  of  determinism,  predestination,  and 
eternal  necessity ;  but  when  one  is  in  a  practical  frame  of 
mind  and  takes  counsel  v\dth  the  heart,  one  must  insist 
on  the  freedom  of  the  v/ill.  Thus  according  to  the 
practical  beliefs  of  all  men  and  according  to  the  deep- 
est experience  in  his  ovvn  personality,  the  poet  finds 
the  verification  of  his  conviction  that  man  is  a  free  moral 
agent. 

Now,  what  has  this  unique  and  indefinable  power  to 
do  with  the  production  of  poetry?  In  the  first  place,  if 
poetry  is  anything  it  is  concrete  and  passionate.  It  is  full 
of  sensation  and  again  sensation,  full  of  sounds  and 
sights.  It  has  primitive  freshness,  flesh  and  blood  quali- 
ties, oftentimes  quite  muscular  and  virile,  at  other  times 


INTRODUCTION.  1 9 

delicate  and  sensitive — but  always  sensuous.  On  the 
other  hand,  poetry  draws  just  as  freely  from  the  purely 
transcendental  and  spiritual  qualities  of  our  experiences, 
the  highest  and  most  relincd  of  which  we  are  capable. 
The  things  of  sense  whicli  form  its  ground  work  become 
refined  and  are  lifted  up  to  a  purified  and  lofty  level. 
The  body  of  sense,  under  the  formative  power  of  poetry, 
becomes,  as  it  were,  the  temple  of  refined  spirits.  Now 
the  power  which  draws  these  remote  ends  of  our  being 
together  in  a  poem,  which  saves  the  things  of  sense  from 
going  the  w^ay  of  the  world  and  transforms  them  into 
vessels  fit  to  hold  the  precious  essence  of  divinity,  is  the 
power  of  will.  This,  then,  is  what  will  has  to  do  with  the 
production  of  poetry.  It  is  the  power  which  penetrates, 
which  restrains,  which  expands,  and  which  elevates. 

It  may  be  urged,  nevertheless,  that  however  strongly 
a  poet  may  believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  will,  poets  gen- 
erally are  notoriously  weak  in  the  exercise  of  their  indi- 
vidual wills.  It  must  at  once  be  granted  that  in  special 
cases  there  are  some  grounds  for  this  objection.  The  case 
that  comes  to  mind  first  of  all  as  an  illustration 
is  that  of  Robert  Burns  —  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful lyric  singers  in  the  world  and  the  most  way- 
ward and  weak-willed  of  the  sons  of  men,  it  is  said. 
There  is  indeed  a  considerable  portion  of  his  poetry 
that  one  might  fairly  wish  otherwise  and  the  failure  of 
which  one  can  trace  directly  to  his  weakness.  But  there 
are  two  things  to  be  said  on  the  point  of  the  weakness — 
that  poets  more  than  odicr  men  are  besieged  by  tempta- 
tions of  the  sort  to  which  Burns  was  a  victim,  and  that 
the  will  in  some  men  seems  to  work  intermittently.  We 
have  just  seen  that  sensuousness  and  passion  are  the 
outer  materials  wath  which  the  poet  must  deal.  And  if 
he  is  not  especiall}^  gifted  witli  the  will  to  restrain,  direct, 


20  INTRODUCTION. 

and  control  passion  and  sense,  he  is  very  liable  to 
abuse  them.  But  Robert  Burns  was  determined  to  write 
poetry,  and  particularly  ennobling  and  highly  moral 
poetry.  His  will  to  write  poetry  was  at  most  times  quite 
steadfast.  Long  he  pondered  and  often  he  improvised, 
and  in  the  heart  and  will  of  him  he  was  genuine.  He  was 
insistent  on  producing  some  good  poetry  for  his  country : 

Ev'n  then  a  wish,  (I  mind  its  power), 
A  wish  that  to  my  latest  hour 
Shall  strongly  heave  my  breast; 
That  I  for  poor  auld  Scotland's  sake, 
Some  usefu'  plan,  or  beuk  could  make, 
Or  sing  a  sang  at  least.^ 

In  speaking  of  some  favorite  passages  from  Young  and 
from  Thomson,  Burns  says,  "Though  I  have  repeated 
them  ten  thousand  times,  still  they  rouse  my  manhood 
and  steel  my  resolution  like  inspiration,"  and  the  thought 
of  one  of  these  passages  is : 

What  proves  the  hero  truly  great 
Is  never,  never  to  despair.* 

The  result  of  these  aspirations,  endeavors  and  resolves 
was  high  and  pu;-e  poetry — ^the  product  indeed  of  a 
sturdy,  determined  will  of  a  Scotchman,  blessed  with  the 
gift  of  song.  And  yet  his  will  sometimes  faltered.  There 
were  indeed  days  and  months  continuously  when  the  will 
unfalteringly  carried  the  man  forward  in  paths  of  virtue, 
self-restraint,  and  high  achievement;  but  suddenly  when 
the  will  was  ofif  guard  and  seemed  strangely  paralyzed 
and  helpless,  there  came  a  vast  inundation  of  passion 
flooding  the  life  of  the  man  into  hopeless  confusion  and 
self-abasement.     The   senses   were  master.     The  mind 


""Answer  to  Verses  Addressed  to  the  Poet." 
^Thomson  and  Mallet,  "The  Masque  of  Alfred." 


INTRODUCTION.  21 

succumbed  to  the  power  of  the  lowest  material  his  haii'l 
wrought  in.  But  the  man  repented,  and  rose  again,  and 
again  there  were  days  and  montlis  of  high  endeavor  and 
the  production  of  poetry  instinct  with  will,  energy,  moral- 
ity, and  freedom. 

The  aberrations  of  will  in  Burns  do  not  invalidate  but 
rather  confirm  the  statement  that  strong  will  power  is  an 
essential  element  in  high  and  serious  poetry.  It  is  this 
power,  on  the  one  hand,  that  saves  the  feelings  from  senti- 
mentality, that  gives  dignity  and  manliness  to  human  life, 
and  that 

Raises  man  aboon  the  brute 

And  mak's  him  ken  himsel' ;' 

and  tlie  power,  on  the  other  hand,  by  which  the  artist 
draws  his  whole  rich  passional  and  spiritual  nature 
within  the  scope  of  a  single  short  poem  or  even  into 
the  expression  of  a  single  sententious  phrase  or  line  and 
makes  us  feel  a  peculiar  tension  of  compression  and 
charged  energy  that  we  are  wont  to  call  style.  And 
though  a  few  men  like  Burns  reveal  the  anomaly  of  an 
unusually  pow^erful  will  and  of  a  will  that  seems  dis- 
eased dwelling  in  the  same  breast,  the  steadfastness  and 
lofty  purpose  of  Milton,  the  singlemindedness  and  high 
endeavors  of  Wordsworth,  the  victorious  war  cry  and 
death-defying  spirit  of  Browning,  and  like  qualities  in 
a  host  of  other  poets,  ought  to  shame  us  into  silence 
regarding  a  few  of  their  weaker  brethren  and  ought  to 
convince  us  of  the  vast  importance  to  life  and  poetry 
of  the  freedom  of  the  will  and  the  sense  of  freedom  in 
the  lives  of  our  poets. 

But  a  second  and  more  serious  objection  may  be 
made  to  the  importance  here  attached  to  this  principle 


"'The  Tree  of  Liberty." 


2  2  INTRODUCTION. 

in  poetry.  It  may  be  urged  that  poetry  in  particular 
demands  spontaneity,  naturalness  and  effortless  flow- 
ing rather  than  conscious  energy  of  will.  And  this 
objection  leads  us  directly  to  the  heart  of  our  subject. 
An  act  of  will  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  most 
simple  and  the  most  inexplicable  of  all  the  characteris- 
tics of  our  mental  life.  To  ask  a  man  to  choose  between 
two  alternatives  offered  him  is  to  ask  something  that 
the  simplest  can  understand.  But  to  explain  the  act 
rationally  when  the  choice  is  once  made  is  as  yet  an 
impossibility  and  has  thus  far  defied  all  science  and 
philosophy.  Yet,  however  inexplicable  the  act  is,  we 
all  feel  in  our  practical  experience  that  we  know  pre- 
cisely what  it  is  to  make  choices,  and  we  know  that  we 
are  bound  to  go  on  making  choices  as  long  as  we  live.  It 
is  not  enough  that  I  will  to  be  good  or  will  to  be  true 
today.  I  must  will  the  same  today  and  tomorrov\r  and 
always.  It  is  not  enough  to  will  to  write  poetry  today 
but  it  must  be  willed  again  and  again.  And  the  power 
of  will  when  exerted,  healthily  and  not  narrowly,  in  one 
direction  is  the  power  to  accumulate  and  increase  will  en- 
ergy. The  will  gains  strength  by  continued  persistence 
in  a  thing;  it  gathers  power  and  volume  like  a  rolling 
snow  ball.  In  poetry  especially,  the  will,  working  in 
and  through  and  by  means  of  passion  and  imagination, 
does  not  grow  sterile  but  remains  healthy  and  flexible. 
And  what  is  the  spontaneity  and  the  flowingness  that 
critics  speak  of  but  the  result  of  accumulated  will  ener- 
gies suddenly  unlocked  under  favorable  circumstances? 
Does  not  the  story  of  Burns,  to  which  allusion  has  al- 
ready been  made — his  v/illing  to  write  poetry,  his  re- 
peating favorite  passages  ten  thousand  times,  his  turn- 
ing out  poems  while  at  the  plow  tail,  his  improvizations, 
his  ponderings, — does  not  this  story  illustrate  the  true 


INTRODUCTION'.  23 

nature  of  any  product  that  may  be  called  spontaneou'i 
and  natural?  Is  not  the  poetry  of  Keats  which  is  sen- 
suous in  a  remarkable  degree  and  which  yet  has,  ac- 
cording to  ]\Iatthcw  Arnold,  Hint  and  iron  in  it,  an  illus- 
tration of  spontaneity  and  flowingness?  "My  heart  is 
now  made  of  iron"  Keats  writes  to  Fannie  I^rawne 
when  he  is  in  the  midst  of  a  poetic  deliverance.  The 
iron  and  flint  is  in  him  because  he  willed  single-heartedly 
to  see  and  to  love  "the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things" 
and  to  set  about  in  an  iron-hearted  fasliion  to  realize 
his  ideal.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  it  is  the  iron  in 
one's  constitution  that  produces  spontaneity  in  the  thing 
to  which  one  lays  his  hand ;  and  conversely,  the  spon- 
taneity required  in  poetry  does  not  invalidate  but  rather 
confirms  the  statement  that  will  power  is  one  of  the 
chiefest  active  faculties  of  the  mind  in  the  production 
of  poetry. 

To  state  the  same  truth  somewhat  diiTerently,  when- 
ever the  will  acts  forcibly  in  a  single  direction  it  puts 
into  action  subconscious  and  allied  powers  whose  ac- 
tivities may  finally  surpass  the  will's  own.  This  surplus 
of  energy  thus  produced,  like  the  overtones  in  music, 
tends  to  enrich  the  product,  give  it  spontaneity,  and 
cover  up,  so  to  speak,  the  original  moving  power  itself. 
To  give  a  simple  illustration  from  personal  experience, 
I  have  for  a  long  time  been  planning  to  write  this  chap- 
ter. I  have  long  and  persistently  held  my  mind  to  it 
against  conflicting  interests.  For  many  days  the  hand 
refused  to  put  down  the  words,  but  at  last  its  work  began. 
Since  then  at  times  the  words  have  come  in  floods  faster 
than  the  hand  could  put  them  down ;  and  sometimes 
when  I  wished  to  stop  the  activity  of  forces  thus  set 
in  motion,  they  persisted  in  spite  of  my  efforts.  Although 
the  original  conception  of  the  chapter  has  been  adhered 


24  INTRODUCTION, 

to,  yet  many  unforeseen  and  subconscious  forces  have 
worked  themselves  in  and  have  enlarged  the  context. 
And  thus  whatever  spontaneity  there  is  in  a  production, 
is  either  the  result  of  previous  persistent  will  efforts  or 
of  the  under-current  forces  set  in  motion  by  those 
same  eft'orts.  Most  of  second-rate  poetry  no  doubt  can 
practically  be  accounted  for  in  this  way.  Have  given 
a  person  reasonably  developed  and  intelligent  as  a  human 
being  and  reasonably  poetic  by  nature,  and  if  he  wills 
to  produce  poetry,  wills  to  ponder  the  idea  of  it  as  Burns 
pondered  it,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  be  a 
poet  of  no  mean  order.  The  whole  lesson  of  Words- 
VN^orth's  "Prelude"  is  that  a  poet's  mind  can  be  had  for 
the  making,  although  Wordsworth  himself,  to  be  sure, 
was  more  than  a  second-rate  poet.  There  exists,  at  any 
rate,  no  contradiction  between  volitional  energy  and 
spontaneity  as  far  as  the  making  of  poetry  is  concerned, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  the  latter  seems  either  a  direct  or 
an  indirect  result  of  the  former. 

There  are,  however,  far  greater  things  than  spon- 
taneity in  great  poetry,  and  the  will  has  greater  func- 
tions to  fulfill.  If  the  will  in  the  commonest  acts  of 
life  is  an  inexplicable  power  to  us,  it  becomes  ten  times 
more  inexplicable  when  we  view  its  action  in  connection 
with  higher  experiences  than  the  ordinary.  No  doubt 
the  most  important  functon  of  the  will  is  to  surrender 
itself  worthily  to  what  it  conceives  a  higher  will.  In  hyp- 
nosis it  is  not  the  scatterbrain  who  is  easily  hypnotized 
but  it  is  the  one  who  can  concentrate  his  mind  upon  a 
single  spot  of  nothing  and  hold  it  there  until  it  is  numb 
enough  to  be  subjected  to  the  will  of  the  experimenter. 
Likewise  it  requires  a  strong  and  unified  will  to  make 
a  complete  self-surrender  to  a  higher  will,  and  to  ex- 
perience the  joy  of  finding  its  own  power  enlarged  and 


INTRODUCTION.  25 

enriched.  But  in  this  act  of  will  there  is  involvefl  the 
essence  of  mystery,  indeed  one  may  say  of  all  mystery : 

Our  wills  are  ours,  wc  know  not  how ; 
Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  thine." 

How  our  wills  can  become  one  with  another  power — 
whether  that  power  be  conceived  as  God,  or  Spirit  of 
the  Universe,  or  the  Spirit  of  Beauty,  or  the  Oversoul, 
or  the  Absolute — this  is  the  question  of  questions,  the 
mystery  of  mysteries.  Thus  the  will — this  most  com- 
mon of  all  our  experiences — becomes  the  door  through 
which  we  enter  directly  to  the  deepest  mysteries  of  being. 
We  need  but  to  will  to  turn  our  faces  toward  the  mys- 
terious and  inexplicable  of  life  and  imagine  ourselves 
m  some  sort  of  union  or  communion  with  it  to  be  made 
keenly  conscious  of  the  indefinable  powers  of  person- 
ality and  being.  And  this  is  precisely  wdiat  a  very  large 
body  of  the  greater  sort  of  poetry  attempts  to  do. 

There  are  many  minor  poets  and  scientific  and  prac- 
tical-minded thinkers  who  shut  themselves  for  the  most 
part  away  from  the  indefinable  and  inexplicable.  Since 
it  lies  in  the  power  of  all  men's  wills  to  do  so,  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  their  choice.  They  deal  with  emotions  and  ordi- 
nary concepts  concretly  and  abstractly,  widi  visible  and 
conceptual  objects,  with  demonstrable  laws  and  possi- 
ble intellectual  attainments,  but  steadfastly  refuse  to 
follow  anything  that  they  consider  chimerical.  Tlie 
ambitious  poet,  however,  files  from  sense  matter  di- 
rectly to  the  incommunicable  and  the  indefinable.  Like 
Milton,  the  poet  is  content  to  soar  with  no  middle  flight 
in  his  adventurous  song.    He  aspires  to  lay  his  hands 


'Tennyson,  "In  Menioriam,"  Prologue. 


26  INTRODUCTIOX. 

On  that  golden  key 
That  opes  the  palace  of  eternity' 

And,  strangely  enough,  or  rather  naturally  enough,  the 
poet  feels  with  more  keenness  than  other  men  the  pres- 
ence of  a  power  that  disturbs  him  "with  the  joy  of  ele- 
vated thoughts,"  of  a  power  not  himself  but  wholly  other 
than  himself,  of  a  will  higher  than  his  own  which  he 
has  in  all  ages  been  in  the  habit  of  invoking  to  his  aid. 
He  is  like  Wordsworth  who  early  in  youth  felt  the  power 
of  poetry  come  upon  him: 

I  made  no  vows,  but  vows 
Were  then  made  for  me;  bond  unknown  to  me 
Was  given,  that  I  should  be,  else  sinning  greatly, 
A  dedicated  Spirit.^ 

The  poet  is  like  the  musician  in  "Abt  Vogler"  who  felt 
that  after  he  himself  had  done  his  best  in  rearing  his 
structure  the  emulous  powers  of  heaven  yearned  down 
to  aid  him.  Novel  and  unexpected  splendors  seemed  to 
burst  forth  and  grow  familiar  and  mingle  with  his  own 
splendors;  balls  of  blaze,  meteor-moons,  and  wander- 
ing stars  of  heaven  became  one  with  the  earth,  obliter- 
ating for  him  time  and  space  and  the  distinctions  of 
higher  and  lower;  and  "there  was  no  more  near  nor  far" ; 
there  was  a  surrender  of  his  will  to  the  will  of  the  in- 
finite. Thus  the  poet  feels  in  his  own  will  the  presence 
of  the  "Stern  Lawgiver"  that  "wears  the  Godhead's 
most  benignant  grace"  and  that  "preserves  the  stars 
from   wrong." 

Sometimes  the  poet  is  merely  interested  in  this  power 
empirically  and  describes  a  process  of  mind,  as  Words- 
worth's description  of  the  way  in  which  he  enters  into 

'"Comus." 
'"Prelude,"  Bk.  IV. 


IXTRODUCTIOX.  7^ 

union  with  and  sees  into  the  "hfe  of  things,"  in  "Tintern 
Abbey,"  (Hnes  35  to  40)  ;  or  as  Shelley's  most  exquisite 
description  of  the  way  in  which  his  mind  long  active  in 
cognition  finally  became  passive,  and  while  in  a  trance, 
which  was  not  a  slumber,  a  vision  was  rolled  in  upon 
his  brain : 

But  I,  whom  thoughts  which  must   remain  untold 
Had  kept  as  wakeful  as  the  stars  that  gem 
The  cone  of  night,  now  they  were  laid  asleep 
Stretched  my  faint  limbs  beneath  the  hoary  stem 

Which  an  old  chestnut  flung  athwart  the  steep 

Of  a  green  Apennine  :  before  me  fled 

The  night;  behind  me  rose  the  day;  the  deep 

Was  at  my  feet,  and  Heaven  above  my  head, 
When  a  strange  trance  over  my  fancy  grew 
Which  was  not  slumber,  for  the  shade  it  spread 

Was  so  transparent  that  the  scene  came  thro' 
As  clear  as  when  a  veil  of  light  is  drawn 
O'er  evening  hills  they  glimmer;  and  I  knew 

That  I  had  felt  the  freshness  of  that  dawn, 
Bathed  in  the  same  cold  dew  my  brow  and  hair, 
And  sat  as  thus  upon  that  slope  of  lawn 

Under  the  self  same  bough,  and  heard  as  there 
The  birds,  the  fountains  and  the  ocean  hold 
Sweet  talk  in  music  thro'  the  enamoured  air, 
And  then  a  vision  on  my  brain  was  rolled." 

Or  as  Carlyle's  description,  not  in  poetic  measure  but 
poetically,  of  the  way  in  wdiich  his  mind  passed  from  an 
indifferent  attitude  to  a  positively  assenting  at^titudc 
toward  the  infinite  God  through  the  act  of  surrendering 
his  will: — "Here,  then,  as  I  lay  in  that  center  of  indiffer- 
ence; cast,  doubtless  by  benignant  upper  Influence,  into 
a  healing  sleep,  the  heavy  dreams  rolled  gradually  away, 
and  I  awoke  to  a  new  Heaven  and  a  new  Earth.     Tlie 


'■'The  Triumph  of  Life." 


2  8  INTRODUCTION. 

first  preliminary  moral  Act,  Annihilation  of  Self  (Selbst- 
todtung),  had  been  happily  accomplished;  and  my  mind's 
eyes  were  now  unsealed,  and  its  hands  ungyved."  When 
his  eyes  are  thus  unsealed  and  he  beholds  the  visible  ob- 
jects of  nature,  he  puts  the  question,  "What  is  Nature?" 
and  answers: — "Why  do  I  not  name  thee  God?  Art 
not  thou  the  'Living  Garment  of  God?'  O  Heavens,  is 
it,  in  very  deed,  He,  then,  that  ever  speaks  through  thee ; 
that  lives  and  loves  in  thee,  that  lives  and  loves  in  me? 
Fore-shadows,  call  them  rather  fore-splendours,  of  that 
Truth,  and  Beginning  of  Truths,  fell  mysteriously  over 
my  soul.  Sweeter  than  Dayspring  to  the  Shipwrecked  in 
Nova  Zembla;  ah,  like  the  mother's  voice  to  her  little 
child  that  strays  bewildered,  weeping,  in  unknown  tu- 
mults ;  like  soft  streamings  of  celestial  music  to  my  too- 
exasperated  heart,  came  that  Evangel.  The  Universe  is 
not  dead  and  demoniacal,  a  charnel-house  with  spectres ; 
but  godlike,  and  my  Father's  I"^*'  And  it  may  be  added 
that  this,  the  moral  act  of  self-surrender  and  the  keen 
consciousness  that  personality  pervades  the  universe,  and 
that  "through  every  star,  through  every  grass-blade, 
and  most  through  every  Living  Soul  the  glory  of  a  pres- 
ent God  still  beams," — that  this  is  the  essence  of  high 
poetry  and  of  mystery. 

The  poets,  however,  do  not  merely  give  an  empirical 
description  of  the  way  in  which  their  minds  enter  into 
union  with  a  higher  power,  but  they  attempt  to  render 
their  conceptions  of  it  in  concrete  forms.  And  as  each 
poet  differs  somewhat  from  his  fellows,  each  one  in 
his  own  way  has  given  a  different  report  of  what  it 
means  to  him.  He  has  bodied  it  forth  concretely  in 
a  thousand  forms.     He  has  given  the  Uncreated  a  hab- 


""  Sartor  Resartus,"  Bk.  II,  Chap.  IX. 


INTRODUCTION.  29 

itation  and  a  name.  Sometimes  the  dominant  tendency 
in  ilic  rendering  is  theological,  sometimes  naturahstic, 
or  morahstic,  or  pantheistic,  or  transcendental,  or  mys- 
tical, but  always  more  or  less  transcendental  and  mys- 
tical. For  the  heart  of  both  mysticism  and  transcendent- 
alism lies  in  the  intensity  and  power  with  which  we  will 
to  face  the  mysterious  and  the  indefinable  within  us  and 
around  us  and  in  the  intensity  and  power  with  which  in 
the  end  we  surrender  ourselves  to  the  mysterious  and 
the  indefinable. 

There  is  a  sort  of  criticism  which  identifies  the  trans- 
cendental and  the  mystical  with  the  vague,  and  thinks  it 
has  condemned  a  poet  when  it  shows  that  his  poetry  runs 
into  transcendentalism  and  mysticism.  This  is  rather 
loose  and  dubious  criticism,  to  say  the  least.  Of  course, 
poetry  must  be  passionate  and  concrete,  but  it  ought 
also  to  be  suggestive;  and  it  is  possible  for  it  to  be  the 
most  suggestive  when  it  is  the  most  concrete,  the  most 
inexhaustible  and  indefinable  when  it  has  the  clearest 
definition.  Even  Shakespeare's  great  characters,  natur- 
alistic and  overwhelmingly  real  as  they  are,  possess  inex- 
haustible and  indefinable  spiritual  powers.  Though  they 
are  overcome  by  fate,  they  impress  us  as  havng  free 
souls  that  are  at  one  with  the  spiritual  freedom  of  the 
universe.  From  such  well-springs  of  spiritual  freedom 
flow  the  powers  of  transcendentalism  and  mysticism,  and 
in  such  a  foutain-head  great  poetry  has  its  source.  Grant- 
ing that  a  poetry  remain  sufficiently  passionate  and  con- 
crete, a  true  measure  of  its  greatness  is  the  measure  of 
the  depth  with  which  it  reveals  the  transcendental,  the 
mystical,  the  indefinable  and  spiritual  elements  of  being. 

The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  study  the  poetry  of 
Wordsworth,  of  Tennyson,  and  of  Browning,  respect- 
ively, from  the  points  of  view  indicated  in  the  preceding 


30  INTRODUCTION. 

pages.  We  shall  see,  first,  how  the  power  of  will  and 
the  spirit  and  theory  of  freedom  have  entered  into  the 
making  of  their  poetry;  and  secondly,  how  the  surren- 
der of  their  wills  to  a  higher  will  led  them  into  the  region 
of  the  transcendental  and  the  mystical,  and  how  each 
characteristically  bodied  forth  his  vision  of  spiritual 
freedom  and  personality;  and  thirdly,  what  ethical  and 
artistic  estimates  may  be  made  of  their  respective  per- 
formances from  the  point  of  view  of  our  inquiry.  The 
study  is  to  be  made  in  the  light  of  a  few  fundamental 
characteristics  of  the  times  in  which  each  lived — in  the 
light  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  times  upon  the 
character  and  of  the  character  upon  the  times. 


CHAPTER  I 

WORDSWORTH  AND  HIS  TIMES. 

What  then  are  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  times 
and  the  vital  quahties  of  character  with  which  we  must 
begin  our  study  of  Wordsworth  ?  The  times  were  chiefly 
rewlutionary :  men  were  making  radical  attempts  to  re- 
adjust society  on  a  higher  level,  which  produced  wide- 
spread social  unrest;  and  men  were  seeking  greater 
personal  liberty,  which  tended  to  emphasize  the  differ- 
ences of  personal  opinion.  This  is  not  intended  to  be  in 
any  sense  a  complete  statement  of  the  characteristics  of 
the  times.  One  needs  but  to  glance  at  the  literature 
dealing  with  this  period  to  see  the  futile  attempts  of 
writers  to  express  in  single  phrases  the  forces  then  at 
work.  Some  of  the  phrases  include  so  much  that  they 
are  vague;  others  are  so  specific  that  they  do  not  in- 
clude enough.  "A  time  of  growing  intolerance  of 
antiquated  and  artificial  forms,"  a  time  of  "reac- 
tion against  eighteenth  century  civilization."  of  a 
"return  to  nature,"  of  "simplification."  a  time  of 
'the  "recreation  of  mediaevalism,"  of  the  "redis- 
covery and  vindication  of  the  concrete,"  a  time 
of  "a  sudden  increase  of  the  vital  energy  of  the 
species,"  a  time  of  "growth  in  the  notion  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man,"  a  time  of  "the  strengthening  of  the  na- 
tional consciousness  of  the  different  nations  of  Europe," 


32  WORDSWORTH. 

— all  these  are  partial  failures  and  partial  successes ; 
they  fail  to  give  an  adequate  conception  of  the  times, 
they  succeed  in  expressing  some  important  aspect  of 
them.  The  complexity  of  the  forces  then  at  work  makes 
it  well  nigh  impossible  to  express  those  forces  in  a  single 
phrase.  And  our  own  statement  claims  only  to  point  out 
such  aspects  of  the  times  as  have  the  most  important 
bearing  on  the  development  of  Wordsworth's  experiences 
regarding  the  power  of  will  and  the  principle  of  mys- 
ticism. 

Yet  the  forces  included  in  our  statement  are  among 
the  most  permanent  of  the  times.  While  many  of  the 
others,  such  as  a  "return  to  nature"  and  the  "rediscov- 
ery and  vindication  of  the  concrete,"  have  done  their 
work,  those  included  in  our  statement  have  still  not 
spent  their  energy,  even  though  a  hundred  years  span  the 
time  between  then  and  now.  Our  times  are  still  revolu- 
tionary, only  in  a  milder  sense.  Though  our  methods  of 
work  are  dififerent  from  those  of  a  hundred  years  ago, 
we  have  not  abated  our  zeal  to  readjust  social  conditions. 
Though  we  may  not  proclaim  personal  liberty  as  vehem- 
ently as  men  did  of  old,  yet  the  divergence  of  the  ex- 
pression of  personal  opinion  is  greater  than  ever,  and 
is  ever  widening.  The  times  of  Wordsworth  initiated 
and  gave  a  tremendous  impetus  to  two  forces  that  char- 
acterize the  whole  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  forces, 
namely,  of  increased  efficiency  and  adjustment  of  organ- 
ized society,  and  the  widened  powers  and  range  of  per- 
sonal liberty. 

The  revolutionary  forces  of  those  days  were  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  settlement  and  readjustment  of 
political  problems.  They  invaded  all  the  departments  of 
human  afifairs,  even  the  affairs  of  practical  religion.  In 
a  preface  to  a  sonnet  written  in  1827,  Wordsworth  makes 


HIS    TIMES.  33 

this  suggestive  statement, — "Attendance  at  church  on 
prayer-days,  Wednesdays  and  Fridays  and  holidays, 
received  a  shock  at  the  Revolution.  It  is  now,  however, 
happily  reviving."  Tiie  spirit  of  revolution  was  in  the 
atmosphere,  and  it  found  its  way  into  every  nook  and 
corner  of  town  and  hamlet : 

'Twas  in  truth  an  hour 
Of  universal  ferment ;  mildest  men 
Were  agitated ;  and  commotions,  strife 
Of  passion  and  opinion,  filled  the  walls 
Of  peaceful  houses  with  unquiet  sounds/ 

Dominant  in  all  the  activities  of  the  times  was  the  note 
of  an  equilibrium  less  secure  than  in  the  period  of  time 
preceding,  of  an  old  anchorage  breaking  up,  of  malad- 
justments and  instabilities,  and  at  the  same  time,  of 
promises  and  potencies  of  a  slow  but  ever  higher  devel- 
opement.  By  the  shock  of  the  Revolution,  men  were 
compelled  to  revert  to  first  principles,  to  explore  all 
natures  in  order  to  find  the  law  that  governs  each.  And 
when,  in  the  presence  of  danger,  a  man  sinks  deeply  into 
himself  to  discover  the  grounds  upon  which  to  think  and 
act,  he  not  only  finds  his  own  opinions  to  diverge  from 
those  of  others,  but  he  also  gathers  courage  for  his  own 
convictions.  Such  was  the  experience  of  Wordsworth 
in  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  But  while  the  insecure 
equilibrium  and  the  maladjustments  of  the  times  en- 
couraged and  reinforced  the  expression  of  personal  expe- 
rience, they  also  tended  to  produce  the  excesses  of  indi- 
vidualism, false  perspectives  of  life,  wild  theories,  and 
unattainable  ideals.  They  account  in  part,  it  has  been 
alleged  and  rightly,  for  the  incoherencies  of  Shelley  and 
the  terrific  convulsions  of  Byron.     But  do  they  not  also 


'"Prelude,"  Bk.  IX. 


34  WORDSWORTH. 

in  part  account  for  the  "amazing  inequalities"  in  Words- 
worth that  have  been  the  wonder  of  critics  from  that 
day  to  this?  It  is  the  misfortune,  or  the  fortune,  of  the 
great  and  the  good  to  understand  the  burdens  and  the 
sorrows  of  a  people  and  to  bear  those  burdens  and  sor- 
rows in  their  own  hearts.  (Is  it  not  indeed  by  virtue 
of  this  sympathetic  understanding  and  this  burden-bear- 
ing that  posterity  gives  them  the  title  of  great  and  good?) 
And  when  those  burdens  are  exceptionally  heavy  and 
those  sorrows  profoundly  deep,  they  leave  their  scars 
in  the  characters  of  even  the  greatest.  As  our  theme 
unfolds,  we  shall  watch  the  dramatic  interplay  of  the 
spirit  of  the  times  and  the  character  of  the  man  until 
we  arrive  at  the  volitional  and  mystical  attitude  toward 
life  that  is  at  once  characteristic  of  the  man  and  a  natural 
outcome  of  the  troubled  times  in  which  he  lived. 

Since  we  have  now  before  us  the  chief  characteris- 
tics of  the  times,  let  us  next  consider  the  qualities  of  mind 
that  were  native  to  Wordsworth  and  that  remained  a 
personal  possession  with  him  through  life.  The  powers 
that  were  given  to  him  by  nature  and  inheritance  were 
the  powers  of  passion  wth  extreme  sensitiveness,  and 
volition  with  a  moral  predisposition.  Like  our  statement 
for  the  spirit  of  the  times,  this  is  not  intended  to  be  a 
complete  formulation  of  all  Wordsworth's  excellent  gifts 
of  mind.  Besides  these,  for  example,  he  possessed  an 
imagination  that  was  not  only  "essentially  scientific,  and 
quite  unlike  the  fancy  that  decorates  and  falsifies  fact  to 
gratify  an  idle  mind  with  a  sense  of  neatness  and  ingenu- 
ity," but  an  imagination  that  was  penetrating  and  con- 
templative and  that  saw,  in  a  very  great  measure,  the 
"soul  of  truth  in  every  part"  of  the  objects  of  its  vision. 
But  this  penetrating  imagination  in  Wordsworth  was 
peculiarly  the  product  of  the  more  elemental  powers  of 


HIS    TIMES.  35 

sensitiveness,  passion,  and  volition.  At  any  rate,  it  is 
the  combination  of  these  elemental  powers  which  furnish 
the  nucleus  of  his  moral  and  intellectual  being  and  give 
the  key  to  his  character. 

/^Tn  writing  to  a  friend  in  1792,  the  sister  of  Words- 
worth says, — "William  has  .  .  a  sort  of  violence  of  af- 
fection, if  I  may  so  term  it,  which  demonstrates  itself 
every  moment  of  the  day,  when  the  objects  of  his  afifec- 
tion  are  present  with  him,  in  a  thousand  almost  imper- 
ceptible attentions  to  their  wishes,  in  a  sort  of  restless 
watchfulness  which  I  know  not  how  to  describe,  a  ten- 
derness that  never  sleeps.''-  With  keen  penetration  she 
points  out  the  basic  elements  in  the  character  of  her 
brother.]  "Restless  watchfulness,"  "a.  tenderness  that 
never  sleeps,"  and  "violence  of  afifection"  are  the  chief 
qualities  of  it.  And  this  characterization  accords  re- 
markably with  Wordsworth's  description  of  his  own 
childhood  given  to  his  intended  biographer  many  years 
later.  He  says,  "I  was  of  a  stiff,  moody,  violent  temper." 
Allowing  for  some  freedom  in  the  use  of  terms,  these 
characteristics  may  be  respectively  dignified  (as,  indeed, 
they  were  dignified  in  \\^ords worth's  manhood)  into 
volition,  sensitiveness,  and  passion.  The  stiffness  of 
temper  of  his  childhood  grew  into  the  "restless  watch- 
fulness" of  his  youth,  and  matured  into  that  thorough- 
going volition  which  directed  the  events  of  his  whole 
after-life ;  the  moodiness  of  his  childhood  grew,  under 
the  forming  agency  of  the  will,  into  the  "tenderness  that 
never  sleeps"  of  his  youth,  and  flowered  into  that  exqui- 
site sensitiveness  characteristic  of  his  whole  subsequent 
career;  while  the  violent  temper  of  his  childhood  grew 
into  the"violent  affections"  of  his  youtii,  and,  tempered  by 


"Taken  from  a  letter  quoted  by  Myers  in  "Wordsworth." 


36  WORDSWORTH. 

the  influence  of  a  masterful  will,  finally  bore  fruit  a 
hundred  fold  in  deep  and  thoroughly  subdued  literary 
passions. 

Passion,  sensitiveness,  volition — these  were  the  pow- 
ers that  were  with  him  when  a  child  hidden  away  among 
the  silences  of  the  Westmoreland  hills,  long  before  the 
terrible  rumblings  of  the  French  Revolution  broke  upon 
his  ears.  Wordsworth  attests  to  the  possession  of  them 
in  his  childhood: 

I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.     The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion ;  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
•An  appetite ;  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm, 
By  thought  supplied,  nor  any  interest  \ 

Unborrowed  from  the  eye.^ 

There  were  not  only  "aching  joys"  and  "dizzy  raptures" 
with  the  child,  but  he  was  strangely  sensitive  to  all  ob- 
_J_e£tSx_^  Before  he  was  ten  years  old  he  would  range 
through  half  the  night  among  the  mountain  slopes  and 
on  the  "open  heights  where  woodcocks  run  along  the 
smooth  green  turf,"  and  would  ply  his  anxious  visita- 
tion: 

Sometimes  it  befell 
In  these  night  wanderings,  that  a  strong  desire 
O'erpowered  my  better  reason,  and  the  bird 
Which  was  the  captive  of  another's  toil 
Became  my  prey;  and  when  the  deed  was  done 
I  heard  among  the  solitary  hills 
Low  breathings  coming  after  me,  and  sounds 
Of  undistinguishable  motion,  steps 
Almost  as  silent  as  the  turf  they  trod.* 


'"Tintern  Abbey." 
^"Prelude,"  Bk.  I. 


HIS    TIMES.  37 

This  not  only  expresses  the  child's  sensitiveness  of  mind, 
but  also  reveals  the  germ  of  a  moral  disposition.  The 
silent  steps,  the  sounds  of  undistinguishable  motion,  and 
the  low  breathings  coming  after  him  were  due  mainly 
to  the  deed  he  had  committed.  In  speaking  of  a  time 
before  he  was  seventeen,  he  says : 

PnU  let  this 
Be  not  forgotten,  that  I  still  retained 
My  first  creative  sensibility ; 
That  by  the  regular  action  of  the  world 
My  soul  was  unsubdued.' 

By  his  creative  sensibility  and  by  his  strength  of  will  he 
very  early  in  youth  kept  his  soul  from  being  subdued 
"by  the  regular  action  of  the  world."  And  in  the  earliest 
of  those  days  his  strong  will,  similar  to  that  of  other 
boys  with  strong  wills,  manifested  itself  in  the  form  of 
wilfulness  and  even  stubbornness.  His  mother  once 
told  an  intimate  friend  of  hers  that  the  only  one  of  her 
five  children  about  whose  future  life  she  was  anxious 
was  William,  and  that  he  would  be  remarkable  either  for 
good  or  for  evil.  But  the  force  of  moral  conviction  in 
his  constitution  was  easily  sufficient  to  save  him  from 
his  mother's  anxious  fears  and  to  give  him  not  only  the 
will  to  live,  but  to  live  morally,  to  realize  the  better  alter- 
native of  his  mother's  prophecy,  and  become  remarkable 
only  for  good. 

These  same  powers  of  passion,  sensitiveness,  and  vo- 
lition were  with  him  in  his  youth.  If  any  further  testi- 
mony than  that  of  his  sister,  which  is  clear  and  unmis- 
takable, is  needed,  it  can  be  found  in  his  early  attitude 
toward  the  French  Revolution.  It  especially  illustrates 
his  volitional  activity.    We  all  know  how  differently  we 


'"Prelude,"  Bk.  II. 


38  WORDSWORTH, 

are  affected  by  two  characters,  one  of  whom  orders  the 
activities  of  his  life  toward  some  definite  end  and  always 
moves  in  a  straight  line  when  the  direction  is  once  chos- 
en, and  the  other  of  whom  is  frequently  at  variance  with 
himself  and  is  easily  turned  from  any  course  by  accident 
or  circumstance.  The  first  impresses  us  as  having,  the 
latter  as  lacking,  will  and  volition.  Now,  Wordsworth, 
whose  temperament  from  childhood  was  somewhat  "stiff," 
was  very  slow  in  choosing  a  direction  of  activity,  but  when 
it  was  once  chosen,  he  held  to  it  with  a  tenacity  equalled 
by  very  few  men.  As  the  "Prelude"  shows  and  as  Myers 
in  his  book  on  Wordsworth  has  well  demonstrated,^ 
Wordsworth  for  a  time  accepted  the  French  Revolution 
as  a  matter  of  course,  without  being  deeply  stirred. 
But  even  after  he  was  thoroughly  aroused  and  his  "in- 
most soul  was  agitated,"  and  he  could  almost 

Have  prayed  that  throughout  earth  upon  all  men 

The  gift  of  tongues  might  fall,  and  power  arrive 
From  the  four  quarters  of  the  winds  to  do 
For  France,  what  without  help  she  could  not  do, 
A  work  of  honour — " 

even  then  he  was  slow  to  throw  himself  into  the  cause. 
He  checked  and  interrogated  his  emotions.  It  was  his 
wont  always  to  hold  his  emotions  in  restraint.  He  would 
not  decide  blindly,  he  would  wait  for  light : 

A  mind  whose  rest 
Is  where  it  ought  to  be,  in  self  restraint, 
In  circumspection  and  simplicity, 
Falls  rarely  in  entire  discomfiture 
Below  its  aim,  or  meets  with,  from  without 
A  treacherv  that  foils  it  or  defeats.' 


•"Prelude,"  Bk.  X. 
^"Prelude,"  Bk.  X. 


HIS    TIMES.  39 

But  finally,  when  he  felt  sure  of  the  worthiness  of  the 
cause,  he  gave  himself,  not  partly  or  stintingly,  but  whole- 
heartedly to  it.  He  was  then  for  France,  out  and  out. 
Resolute  and  single-minded,  he  stood  ready  to  serve  her 
at  any  cost.  What  a  shock  then  his  moral  and  sensitive 
nature  must  have  sustained  when  a  little  later  his  hopes 
for  France  were  blasted !  Wordsworth  was  a  man  who 
accepted  great  human  issues  seriously.  He  believed  in 
what  truth  he  possessed  as  few  men  believe  in  truth. 
And  when  once  in  his  life  he  was  compelled  to  witness 
the  complete  failure  of  his  highest  hopes,  it  was  only  by 
a  slow  and  painful  process  that  he  readjusted  himself 
to  another  course.  Had  his  desire  to  see  the  truth  vic- 
torious been  less  intense,  had  the  issues  at  stake  in 
France  been  taken  to  heart  less  seriously,  had  his  will 
in  the  matter  been  less  strong,  he  would  have  passed 
through  the  moral  crisis  with  correspondingly  greater 
ease.  The  deep  impression  this  crisis  made  in  his  life 
is  proof  of  Wordsworth's  tenacity  of  mind  and  unex- 
celled volitional  and  moral  temper  in  youth. 

But  these  same  powers  of  passion  with  sensitiveness, 
and  volition  with  a  moral  predisposition,  were  with  him 
in  his  mature  years  and  manifest  themselves  in  his  best 
works.  Though  we  cannot  pluck  the  heart  out  of 
Wordsworth's  mystery,  it  is  quite  certain  that  it  lies  in 
the  direction  of  his  wonderful  sensitiveness  to  the  simple 
and  elemental  forces  of  life,  his  insight  into  them,  his 
firm  grasp  on  them,  and  his  power  of  compelling  the 
reader  to  feel  them,  colored  as  they  always  are  by  his 
own  moral  disposition.     The  following  familiar  passage, 

I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 


40  WORDSWORTH. 

Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns. 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things — * 

does  not  primarily  owe  its  strength  and  wonder  to  any 
new  and  original  philosophical  conception  underlying 
it.  The  conception  that  there  is  a  unified  and  living 
spirit  'back  of  all  things  and  in  and  through  all  things  is 
as  old  as  the  thinking  race.  But  this  passage  owes  its 
uniqueness  and  fame  almost  wholly  to  the  mysterious 
vitality  of  volition.  The  power  of  it  is  due  to  the  inti- 
macy of  the  presence,  to  the  fact  that  the  presence  dis- 
turbs one's  inmost  being.  One  is  compelled  to  feel  the 
motion  and  the  spirit  that  impels  all  things.  If  there  is  any 
new  philosophical  conception  here  at  all,  it  is  the  concep- 
tion of  vital  movment — of  attributing  volition  to  the 
"goings-on  of  the  universe."  It  should  be  remembered 
that  the  chief  part  of  Wordsworth's  definition  of  a  poet 
makes  him  "a  man  pleased  with  his  own  passions  and 
volitions,  and  who  rejoices  more  than  other  men  in  the 
spirit  of  life  that  is  in  him;  delighting  to  contemplate 
similar  volitions  and  passions  as  manifested  in  the 
goings-on  of  the  universe,  and  habitually  impelled  to 
create  them  where  he  does  not  find  them."^  And  this 
passage  of  poetry  is  an  illustration  of  his  definition.  It 
deepens  immeasurably  one's  sense  of  the  sublime  ener- 
gies of  volition — volition  in  the  vast  spaces  of  the  uni- 
verse without  and  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  man 
within.  Wordsworth's  grasp  on  the  elemental  pas- 
sions and  volitional  energies  of  life  was  the  grasp  of  a 


^"Tintern  Abbey." 

"Preface  to  "Lyrical  Ballads." 


Ills    TIMES.  41 

giant;  and  the  passionate  and  volitional  life  that  springs 
from  his  poetry  gives  that  poetry  its  chief  distinction. 

There  is  also  an  undercurrent  of  motion  in  his  poetry 
which  gives  it  a  peculiar  distinction ;  it  seems  to  be  a 
sublimation  of  activity,  but  expressed  with  such  a  strong 
grasp  on  reality  that  its  force  is  extremely  effective. 
In  the  little  poem,  "She  Was  a  Phantom"  there  is  drawn 
a  woman  that  is  "a  spirit,  yet  a  woman  too :" 

She  was  a  Phantom  of  delight 
When  first  she  gleamed  upon  my  sight. 

This  character  does  not  impress  one  with  the  quali- 
ties of  color,  concreteness,  flesh  and  blood,  and  the  like, 
for  she  is  too  phantom-like  and  sublimated  to  possess 
these  qualites.  But  she  impresses  one  with  a  very  dif- 
ferent kind  of  reality.  She  gleams  upon  one's  sight. 
There  is  intensive  movement  inherent  in 

Her  household  motions  light  and  free, 
And  steps  of  virgin  libert3% 

and  the  vitality  of  her  motions  is  directly  felt  as  a  reality 
by  the  reader.     She  is 

A  perfect  Woman,  nobly  planned 

To   warn,   to  comfort,    and   command. 

She  is  at  once  the  embodiment  of  spiritual  sublimation 
and  reality,  and  her  power  over  us  lies  in  the  complete 
fusion  of  these  two  opposite  forces  in  her  character  by 
means  of  the  mysterious  vitality  and  intensity  of  the 
poet's  volition.  * 

In  the  great  lyrical  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  then, 
there  is  not  simply  the  purely  lyrical  strain  which  arises 
from  a  mood  or  a  feeling,  but  there  is  in  it  a  union  of 


*See  Note  3,  Appendix. 


42  WORDSWORTH. 

feeling  and  force,  of  mood  and  self-control,  of  emotion 
and  volition. 

And  the  will  has  two  functions  to  fulfill  in  the  pro- 
duction of  Wordsworth's  poetry.  He  himself  says  that 
"poetry  is  the  spontaneous  overflow  of  powerful  feel- 
ings: it  takes  its  origin  from  emotion  recollected  in  tran- 
quillity; the  emotion  is  contemplated,  till,  by  a  species  of 
reaction,  the  tranquillity  gradually  disappears,  and  an 
emotion,  kindred  to  that  which  was  before  the  subject 
of  contemplation,  is  gradually  produced,  and  does  itself 
actually  exist  in  the  mind.  In  this  mood  successful  com- 
position generally  begins  and  in  a  mood  similar  to  this  it 
is  carried  on."  First,  the  will,  by  a  species  of  reaction, 
whips  a  recollected  emotion  into  a  state  of  excitement, 
and  then  the  overflow  of  the  powerful  emotion  thus 
excited  must  be  held  under  restraint  as  it  enters  into 
the  making  of  a  poetic  composition.  Though  this  theory 
for  the  production  of  poetry  is  by  no  means  true  for  the 
production  of  all  successful  composition,  it  is  certainly 
a  careful  and  exact  transcript  of  what  took  place  in  the 
conscious  part  of  Wordsorth's  own  mind. 

Since  this  is  not  merely  the  description  of  an  intel- 
lectual process,  but  involves  the  activities  of  passion  and 
volition  as  well  as  intellect,  it  ofifers  an  excellent  insight 
into  Wordsworth's  whole  nature  and  character.  His 
was  a  life  of  continuous  "high  endeavors"  at  "plain  liv- 
ing and  high  thinking,"  conscious  and  purposive.  To 
everything  he  did  he  imparted  a  touch  of  volition.  Even 
his  "wise  passiveness"  requires  a  certain  mental  alert- 
ness that  does  not  belong  to  a  lazy  man  since  it  presup- 
poses more  or  less  conscious  effort.  In  the  early  days 
-of  Wordsworthian  criticism  Aubrey  De  Vere,  in  an  elo- 
quent essay,  showed  that  Wordsworth's  nature  was  pas- 
sionate.   He  says : — "The  whole  of  Wordsworth's  nature 


HIS    TIM  lis.  43 

was  impassioned,  body  and  spirit,  intellect  and  imagina- 
tion." What  aroused  the  critic  was  the  fact  that  since 
Wordsworth  was  so  completely  the  master  of  his  pas- 
sions unsympathetic  critics  had  alleged  that  he  did  not 
possess  any.  In  Wordsworth's  mature  years  the  will  al- 
ways dominates  the  feelings.  "There  is  volition  and 
self-government  in  every  line  of  his  poetry,"  says  Hutton, 
and  there  is  likewise  volition  and  self-government  in 
every  act  of  his  life.  It  is  with  him  as  though  there 
were  a  great  underground  reservoir  of  passion.  But 
the  reservoir  is  so  deeply  and  firmly  set  in  adamant  that 
an  explosion  is  impossible. 

There  is  something  of  the  wariness  of  a  logician  in 
Wordsworth's  statement:  "Had  I  been  a  writer  of  love- 
poetry  it  would  have  been  natural  for  me  to  write  with 
a  degree  of  warmth  which  could  hardly  have  been  ap- 
proved by  my  principles,  and  which  might  have  been 
undesirable  for  the  reader."  Like  the  logician  who  is, 
more  than  others,  conscious  of  the  limitations  of  logic, 
Wordsworth  the  man  of  volitions  and  self-government 
is  constantly  aware  of  the  limits  of  the  power  of  self- 
control;  and  like  the  logician  again  who  is  forever  deal- 
ing with  matter  that  is  refractory  to  logic,  W^ordsworth  is 
always  dealing  with  forces  that  lie  just  outside  of  his 
control,  with  intuitive  impulses,  with  acts  in  which  "we 
associate  ideas  in  a  state  of  excitement."  with  half  con- 
scious forces  that  are  defiant  to  the  subordination  of 
the  mind  yet  do  not  overwhelm  its  conscious  self-posses- 
sion. In  close  juxtaposition  to  a  passage  in  the  Fourth 
Book  of  the  "Prelude,"  in  which  he  emphasizes  the  in- 
dependent, self-directing  and  creative  power  of  the  Soul. 
there  is  this  passage,  which  tells  of  half-conscious  in- 
fluences to  the  finer  influx  of  which  his  sensitive  "mind 
lay  open  to  a  more  exact  and  close  communion:" 


44  WORDSWORTH. 

Around  me  from  among  the  hazel  leaves, 

Now  here,  now  there,  moved  by  the  straggling  wind. 

Came  €ver  and  anon  a  breath-like  sound, 

Quick  as  the  pantings  of  the  faithful  dog, 

The  off  and  on  companion  of  my  walk; 

And  such,  at  times,  believing  them  to  be, 

I  turned  my  head  to  look  if  he  were  there; 

Then  into  solemn  thought  I  passed  once  more. 

With  the  soul's  subordination  of  powers  Hke  these — 
pervasive  yet  only  half-conscious — Wordsworth  was  con- 
stantly dealing,  but  with  the  passion  of  love,  which  is 
sufficiently  strong  and  self-conscious  to  require  a  degree 
of  warmth  in  treatment  that  could  hardly  be  approved 
by  his  principles,  and  which  is  likely  to  invade  the  power 
of  self-control,  he  refused  to  deal  directly.  Though  he 
acknowledged  that 

Love,  blessed  Love,  is  ever3'where 
The  spirit  of  my  song," 

3-et  he  preferred  to  keep  so  far  from  the  borderline  ot 
conflict  between  passionate  love  and  self-control  that  he 
would  always  be  absolutely  sure  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
latter.  But  he  who  would  aspire  to  fathom  the  depth 
of  the  human  soul  and  at  the  same  time  remain  human- 
hearted,  must  also  be  willing  to  sound  its  tumult.  Words- 
worth, however,  consistently  refused  to  do  the  latter, 
which  resulted  not  only  in  a  distinct  loss  of  human- 
heartedness,  but  also  in  the  gain  of  a  certain  conscious 
self-mastery  which  is  at  once  the  source  of  both  his 
weakness  and  his  strength. 

A  precaution  must  be  thrown  out  at  this  point.  It  is 
not  here  intended  to  convey  the  idea  that  Wordsworth's 
best   and  most  characteristic   poems   were   the   product 


'The  Poet  and  the  Caged  Turtledove." 


HIS    TIMES.  45 

wholly  of  self-directed  efifort  and  the  "conscious  con- 
quests of  insight."  There  is  at  bottom  no  contradic- 
tion in  saying  that  there  is  volition  and  self-government 
in  every  line  of  his  poetry  and  that  at  the  same  time 
nature  not  only  gave  him  the  matter  of  his  best  poems 
but  also  wrote  his  poems  for  him.  For  it  may  be  con- 
ceived that  a  richly  endowed  mind  may  have  a  great 
variety  of  instinctive  and  spontaneous  qualities  and  still 
possess  a  more  than  usual  amount  of  self-consciousness 
and  self-government.  Self-possession  and  spontaneity 
are  not  mutually  exclusive,  but  may  both  abound  in  a 
genius  of  a  volitional  type.  This  seems  to  be  the  truth  in 
the  case  of  Wordsworth.  His  strength,  from  this  point 
of  view,  lies  in  the  happy  co-operation,  at  rare  moments, 
of  self-possession  and  spontaneity.  This  co-operation  is 
so  difficult  to  attain  that  we  should  not  expect  Words- 
worth to  attain  to  it  always,  but  to  fail  at  times,  as  indeed 
he  does,  on  the  side  of  spontaneity.  How  these  uncon- 
scious and  spontaneous  elements  are  wrought  into 
artistic  structures  we  may  never  know  from  the  very  fact 
that  they  are  unconscious  and  spontaneous.  In  his 
prefaces  to  his  poems  Wordsworth  does  not  make  enough 
allowance  for  the  part  they  actually  play  in  the  makng 
of  his  poetry.  But  in  those  same  prefaces,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  gives  the  most  accurate  and  profound  descrip- 
tion of  what  took  place  consciously  in  his  own  mind,  and 
in  so  far  the  prefaces  are  invaluable,  not  only  as  a 
criticism  of  the  conscious  side  of  his  art,  but  as  giving  us 
excellent  insights  into  his  character. 

By  the  strenuous  exercise  of  the  power  of  passion 
and  will  Wordsworth  developed  an  unusually  strong 
spirit  of  personal  liberty  and  acquired  a  complete  mas- 
tery of  his  senses.  When,  in  his  mature  years,  he  looked 
back  over  the  passionate  life  of  his  childhood,  he  felt  that 


46  WORDSWORTH. 

he  had  lived  too  much  the  life  of  the  senses.  He  says 
in  the  "Prelude:" 

I  speak  in  recollection  of  a  time 
When  the  bodily  eye,  in  every  stage  of  life 
The  most  despotic  of  our  senses,  gained 
Such  strength  in  fne  as  often  held  my  mind 
In  absolute  dominion." 

He  very  kindly  and  genially  ascribes  his  mind's  redemp- 
tion from  this  thralldom  to  the  powers  of  nature,  and 
suggests  that  if  he  cared  to  enter  upon  abstruser  argu- 
ment, he  could  "unfold  the  means  which  nature  studious- 
ly employs  to  thwart  this  tyranny."  Whatever  the 
agency  by  which  this  tyranny  was  thwarted,  it  is  quite 
certain  that  by  the  time  he  was  writing  the  "Prelude" 
his  own  mind  had  become  a  safe-guard  against  any  such 
tyranny,  and  that  too,  without  the  agency  of  natural 
forces.  Just  as  he  resisted  the  power  of  passionate  love 
to  master  his  will,  so  he  carefully  guarded  against  the 
despotism  of  the  senses  and  even  looked  back  with  a 
jealous  eye  upon  their  despotism  in  his  childhood.  He 
had  now  shaken  oflf  the  domineering  habit  of  the  senses : 

I  had  known 
Too  forcibly,  too  early  in  my  life, 
Visitings  of  imaginative  power 
For  this  to  last :  I  shook  the  habit  off 
Entirely  and  forever,  and  again 
In  Nature's  presence  stood,  as  now  I  stand, 
A  sensitive  being,  a  creative  soul." 

And  he  had  now  become  the  example  of  his  own  text : 

Man,  if  he  do  but  live  within  the  light 

Of  high  endeavours,  daily  spreads  abroad 

His  being  armed  with  strength  that  cannot  fail." 


""Prelude,"  Bk.  XII. 
""Prelude,"  Bk.  XII. 
""Prelude,"  Bk.  IV. 


HIS   TIMES.  47 

With  a  mind  that  was  sensitive  and  creative  and  that  con- 
stantly Hved  in  the  light  of  high  endeavors,  Wordsworth 
had  attained  a  high  vantage  ground  from  which  to  ex- 
plore nature  and  human  life.  He  was  like  a  man  on  a 
high  eminence  over-looking  a  broad  expanse  of  country. 
The  slightest  change  of  position  presents  views  of  objects 
remote  from  each  other  and  varied  in  kind  and  nature. 
He  was  like  the  Solitary  of  his  own  "Excursion,"  who  in 
the  wilds  of  America, 

Having  gained  the  top 
Of  some  commanding  eminence,  which  yet 
Intruder  ne'er  beheld,  he  thence  surveys 
Regions  of '  wood  and  wide  savannah,  vast 
Expanse  of   unappropriated   earth, 
With  mind  that  sheds  a  light  on  what  he  sees; 
Free  as  the  sun,  and  lonely  as  the  sun. 
Pouring  above  his  head  its  radiance  down 
Upon  a  living  and  rejoicing  world !" 

And  thus,  with  a  mind  that  shed  light  on  what  it  saw  and 
that  was  as  free  as  the  sun  and  oftentimes  as  lonely  as 
the  sun,  Wordsworth  had  attained  to  a  perfect  self-mas- 
tery and  to  a  large  and  glorious  freedom. 

We  have  now  seen  that  the  spirit  of  the  times  was  rev- 
olutionary and  that  men  attempted  to  readjust  society  on 
a  higher  level  and  sought  greater  personal  liberty.  We 
have  also  seen  that  Wordsworth  possessed  the  powers  of 
passion  with  extreme  sensitiveness,  and  volition  with  a 
moral  predisposition,  and  that  by  the  exercise  of  these 
powers  in  a  time  of  revolution  and  of  liberty-seeking  he 
attained  to  an  excellent  self-mastery  and  a  glorious  per- 
sonal freedom. 


"'Excursion,"  Bk.  III. 


CHAPTER  II 

WORDSWORTH :    MEMORY  AND  WILL. 


Wordsworth's  theory  of  freedom  accords  with  his 
strong  sense  of  personal  freedom  in  actual  experience, 
which  we  have  just  described.  As  early  as  his  first  col- 
lege vacation  he  had  learned  that  the  immortal  soul  has 
the  God-like  power  to  inform,  to  create,  and  to  mould  her 
environment : 

I  had  inward  hopes 
And  swellings  of  the  spirit,  was  rapt  and  soothed, 
Conversed  with  promises,  had  glimmering  views 
How  life  pervades  the  undecaying  mind; 
How  the  immortal  soul  with  God-like  power 
Informs,  creates,  and  thaws  the  deepest  sleep 
That  time  can  lay  upon  her.* 

He  had  also  made  careful  observation  of 

Those  passages  of  life  that  give 
Profoundest  knowledge  to  what  point,  and  how, 
The  mind  is  lord  and  master — outward  sense 
The  obedient  servant  of  her  will." 

And  at  a  much  later  time,  when  writing  the  "Excursion,"* 
he  observed  that 


'"Prelude,"  Bk.  IV. 
'"Prelude,"  Bk  XIL 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  49 

Within  the  soul  a  faculty  abides, 
That  with  interpositions,  which  would  hide 
And  darken,  so  can  deal  that  they  become 
Contingencies  of  pomp;  and  serve  to  exalt 
Her  native  brightness.* 

This  free  power  of  the  mind,  he  says,  sets  forth  and  mag- 
nifies virtue,  and  saves  the  soul  "from  palpable  oppres- 
sions of  despair."  In  the  opening  of  the  Ninth  Book  of 
the  "Excursion"  he  says  that  this  principle  of  freedom 
subsists  in  all  things : 

Whate'er  exists  hath  properties  that  spread 

Be3'ond  itself; from  link  to  link, 

It  circulates,  the  Soul  of  all  the  worlds. 
This  is  the  freedom  of  the  universe. 

But  he  adds  that  "its  most  apparent  home"  is  in  the 
human  mind.  And  when  the  outward  facts  of  life — the 
fact,  for  example,  that  men,  who  in  the  morn  of  youth 
defied  the  elements,  must  vanish — seem  to  deny  that 
freedom  has  its  most  apparent  home  in  the  human  mind, 
we  are  still  intuitively  to  "feel  that  we  are  greater  than 
we  know" : 

Be  it  so ! 
Knough,  if  something  from  our  hands  have  power 
To  live,  and  act,  and  serve  the  future  hour ; 
And  if,  as  toward  the  silent  tomb  we  go. 
Through  love,  through  hope,  and  faith's  transcendent  dower 
We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know.* 

The  mind  of  man  has  the  power  to  create  and  to  inform; 
it  is  lord  and  master  of  outward  sense,  it  can  feel  its 
faith  in  freedom,  it  can  will  to  believe,  and  can  go  on 
forever  living  in  the  light  of  this  faith.  According  to 
this  philosophy  knowledge  is  relegated  to  a  second  place. 


'"Excursion,"  Bk.  IV. 
•"After-thought." 


50  WORDSWORTH. 

Knowledge  is  great,  but  love,  hope,  faith,  feeling,  power 
of  will,  freedom — these  are  greater. 

But  just  as  freedom  has  its  most  apparent  home  in 
the  human  mind,  so  Wordsworth  finds  the  human  mind 
the  best  home  for  his  poetry.  By  the  power  of  his  will, 
he  focused  his  feelings  and  imagination  with  great  inten- 
sity upon  the  life  within,  upon  memory,  instincts,  per- 
ception, moral  power,  etc.  Penetrating  deep  into  his  own 
heart  he  there  found  revealed  the  fact  of  God,  immor- 
tality, and  freedom. 

Among  these  inner  powers  there  is  none  that  he  dwells 
on  more  intensely  than  the  power  of  memory ;  and  from 
the  extraordinary  frequency  with  which  allsuions  are 
made  to  his  childhood  in  his  poetry  it  is  quite  evident  that 
the  memories  of  his  childhood  were  one  of  the  objects 
of  his  experience  upon  which  his  will  focused  his  feel- 
ings and  imagination.  But  from  tlie  fact  that  he  scarcely 
ever  alludes  to  the  time  of  his  life  between  his  childhood 
and  maturity  that  is  so  fraught  with  important  issues 
in  the  formation  of  character,  we  are  convinced  that  he 
took  slight  interest  in  "the  naked  recollection  of  that 
time."  To  be  sure  in  the  Books  from  the  Third  to  the 
Sixth,  inclusive,  of  the  "Prelude,"  in  which  poem  he 
deliberately  sets  out  to  trace  the  growth  of  a  poetic  mind 
from  childhood  to  maturity  there  is  considerable  said 
about  adolescence  and  maturing  youth.  But  even  here, 
especially  in  the  Fourth  and  Fifth  Books,  he  has  a  tend- 
ency often  to  slip  back  into  the  period  of  "our  simple 
childhood,"  which  "sits  upon  a  throne  that  hath  more 
power  than  all  the  elements."  Again  and  again  he  re- 
turns to  this  point  of  view.  Even  in  the  Eighth  Book, 
where  according  to  the  natural  evolution  of  the  poem  he 
should  have  passed  this  period,  he  not  only  g^ves  a  long 
retrospective  view  of  that  time  when  nature  was  "prized 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  5I 

for  her  own  sake"  and  became  his  joy,  but  he  describes 
the  quahty  of  childhood  fancies  at  great  length.  In  the 
Twelfth  and  Thirteenth  Books,  w'here  one  would  think 
surely  he  had  done  with  the  subject,  he  turns  upon  it 
more  strongly  than  ever  in  his  attempts  to  explain  the 
mystery  of  imagination  and  taste.     He  exclaims, 

Oh!  mystery  of  man,  from  what  a  depth 
Proceed  thy  honors.     I  am  lost,  but  see 
In  simple  childhood  something  of  the  base 
On  which  thy  greatness  stands." 

In  fact,  with  the  exception  of  the  Seventh  Book,  which 
is  perhaps  the  dullest  in  the  "Prelude,"  and  the  Ninth, 
Tenth  and  Eleventh  Books,  into  which  political  consider- 
ations enter,  the  "Prelude"  continually  eddies  about  the 
idea  of  childhood  and  never  really  passes  beyond  it. 

Outside  his  inner  communings  with  himself  and  nature 
which  he  had  begim  in  his  childhood,  Wordsworth  has 
little  to  say  about  his  college  life  and  vacations  that  is 
instructive  and  inspiring.  He  says  somewhat  indiffer- 
ently : 

Companionships, 
Friendships,  acquaintances,  were  welcome  all. 
We  sauntered,  played,  or  rioted ;  we  talked 
Unprofitable  talk  at  morning  hours; 
Drifted  about  along  the  streets  and  walks, 
Read  lazily  in  trivial  books,  went  forth 
To  gallop  through  the  country  in  blind  zeal 
Of  senseless  horsemanship,  or  on  the  breast 
Of  Cam  sailed  boisterously,  and  let  the  stars 
Come  forth,  perhaps  without  one  quiet  thought.' 

It  is  highly  instructive  to  contrast  this  allusion  to  sailing 
boisterously  "on  the  breast  of  Cam"  and  letting  the  "stars 


*"Prelude,"  Bk.  XII. 
'"Prelude,"  Bk.  III. 


52  WORDSWORTH. 

come  forth  perhaps  without  one  quiet  thought,"  with  the 
description  in  the  First  Book  of  the  "Prelude"  of  saiHng, 
when  a  boy,  in  an  "elfin  pinnace"  which  left 

Behind  her  still,  on  either  side, 
Small  circles  glittering  idly  in  the  moon 
Until  they  melted  all  into  one  track 
Of  sparkling  light. 

It  was  not  only  the  boisterous  sailing  on  the  breast  of 
Jam  but  the  companionships,  idle  talk,  trivial  books, 
senseless  horsemanship — these  were  all  matters  of  in- 
difference to  him;  and  these  indifferent  things  produced 
a  sort  of  gap  in  the  otherwise  continuousness  of  his  life. 
A  link  between  his  childhood  and  manhood  was  lost, 
which  void  gave  rise  to  a  sense  of  double  consciousness : 

So  wide  appears 
The  vacancy  between  me  and  those  days 
Which  yet  have  such  self-presence  in  my  mind 
That,  musing  on  them,  often  do  I  seem 
Two  consciousnesses,  conscious  of  myself 
And  of  some  other  Being.' 

It  is  a  simple  fact  of  psychology  that  when  any  memory 
images  are  voluntarily  recalled  and  are  brooded  over  they 
become  more  vivid  and  lifelike  than  ordinary  memory 
images,  and  can  be  made  as  vivid  and  lifelike  as  the  im- 
ages of  immediate  perception.  It  seems  that  Words- 
worth, following  somewhat  the  line  of  least  resistance, 
voluntarily  vivified  the  "remembrance  of  those  long  past 
hours"  of  childhood  at  the  expense  of  the  memories  of 
adolescent  years;  and  that  as  a  consequence,  the  aggre- 
gate memories  of  childhood  stood  in  his  mind  somewhat 


'"Prelude"  Bk.  II. 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  53 

apart  from  tlie  images  of  immediate  perception,  so  that 
he  simultaneously  felt  conscious  of  himself  and  some 
otlier  Being. 

Tlie  fact,  however,  that  Wordsworth  voluntarily  viv- 
ified the  memories  of  childhood  is  not  a  fact  of  sufficient 
weight  to  account  for  this  strangely  divided  conscious- 
ness. There  is  a  deeper  cause  for  it.  There  was  another 
force  that  wrought  in  conjunction  with  his  will  toward 
the  same  end.  That  force  was  the  great  external  fact  of 
Wordsworth's  late  youth  and  early  manhood,  the  fact, 
namely,  of  the  French  Revolution.  During  his  adolesc- 
ent years  and  up  to  the  dawn  of  his  interest  in  the  Rev- 
olution, he  was  much  given  to  introspective  tendencies.'/ 
In  the  parts  of  the  "Prelude"  relating  to  this  period  of 
time,  are  many  passages  that  speak  of  the  "reasonings 
of  the  mind  turned  inward."  It  was  his  wont  to  sepa- 
rate himself  from  his  companions  and  allow  his  "mind  to 
turn  into  herself."    He  early  discovered  that 

Caverns  there  were  within  my  mind  which  sun 
Could  never  penetrate.' 

But  in  early  days  of  youth  this  tendency  toward  intro- 
spection may  easily  become  abnormal,  and  there  is  a 
slight  touch  of  the  morbid  in  some  of  Wordsworth's 
youthful  moodiness.  There  existed  in  his  mind,  he 
says,  at  this  time, 

A  treasonable  growth 
Of  indecisive  judgements,  that  impared 
And  shook  the  mind's  simplicity.* 

He  slightly  overstrained  tiie  instrument  of  introspection 
that  was  to  do  such  effective  work  in  later  years.     This 


•"Prelude,"  Bk.  III. 
•"Prelude."  Bk  III. 


54  WORDSWORTH. 

excess,  however,  can  easily  be  overlooked  in  the  light  of 
the  fact  that  he  now  also  perfected  this  instrument  for 
future  use. 

But  when,  in  his  twenty-second  year,  Wordsworth 
became  vitally  alive  to  the  agitation,  the  sorrow,  and  the 
terror  of  the  Revolution,  he  was  completely,  though  sjow- 
ly,  taken  out  of  himself.  His  mind  turned  from  within, 
outward : 

I  gradually  withdrew 
Into  a  noisier  world,  and  thus  ere  long 
Became  a  patriot;  and  my  heart  was  all 
Given  to  the  people,  and  my  love  was  theirs." 

And  when  later  he  was  at  the  point  of  leaving  France,  he 
assures  us  that  he  would 

I  At  this  time  with  willing  heart 

'      Have  undertaken  for  a  cause  so  great 
Service  however  dangerous." 

And  the  only  reason  why  he  did  not  perform  this  "ser- 
vice however  dangerous"  was  that  he  was  peremptorily 
called  home  by  his  guardians.  His  summons  home,  how- 
ever, did  not  lessen  his  enthusiasm  for  the  cause  of  the 
Revolution  but  rather  heightened  it.  It  is  a  common  ex- 
perience that  a  man's  enthusiasm  for  a  cause  is  height- 
ened when  his  hands  are  tied  so  that  he  cannot  play  the 
part  in  it  he  has  espoused  in  his  heart. 

Wordsworth  had  been  at  Orleans  and  had  learned 
the  local  and  national  characteristics  of  the  French.  He 
had  been  at  Blois  and  for  three  months  had  associated 
intimately  with  Beaupuy,  who  opened  his  mind  to  the 
real  issues  of  the  Revolution.     He  had  seen  the  hunger- 


""Prelude,"  Bk.  IX. 
""Prelude,"  Bk.  X. 


MEMORY   AND    WILL.  55 

bitten  girl  and  the  heifer,  which  incident  greatly  enforced 
the  arguments  of  Beaupuy  that  a  benignant  spirit  was 
abroad  to  destroy  sucli  poverty ;  and  Wordswortli's  deep- 
est chords  of  sympathy  were  touched.  He  had  accepted 
the  September  massacres  as  a  necessary  violence  during 
a  revolution,  for,  as  he  explained  a  little  later,  "a  tijne  of 
revolution  is  not  a  season  of  true  liberty."  He  had  been 
in""JParis  and  hacP'^assed  the  prison  where  the  unhappy 
Monarch  lay,"  and  that  night  in  a  liigh  and  lonely  room 
he  had  felt  most  deeply  in  what  world  he  was,  what 
ground  he  trod  on,  and  what  air  he  breathed.  He  thought 
of  the  September  massacres  ami  of  the  Monarch  in  the 
prison,  and  conjured  up  similar  scenes  from  "tragic  fic- 
tions or  true  history."    "And  in  this  way,"  he  says, 

I  wrought  upon  myself, 
Until  I  seemed  to  hear  a  voice  that  cried. 
To  the  whole  city,  "Sleep  no  more."" 

He  had  clearly  perceived  that  the  forces  at  work  in  the 
Revolution  did  not  arise  in  a  day  and  were  not  the  har- 
vest of  "popular  government  and  equality ;"  but  he  clear- 
ly saw 

That  neither  these  nor  aught 
Of  wild  belief  engrafted  on  their  names 
By  false  philosophy  had  caused  the  woe, 
But  a  terrific  reservoir  of  guilt 
And  ignorance  filled  up  from  age  to  age, 
That  could  no  longer  hold  its  loathsome  charge, 
But  burst  and  spread  in  deluge  through  the  land." 

What  he  did  not  perceive  as  clearly  at  this  time  was  that 
it  would  take  as  many  ages  for  the  reservoir  of  guilt  and 
ignorance  to  disappear  as  it  had  been  in  filling  up  from 


""Prelude,"  Bk.  X. 
""Prelude."  Bk.  X. 


56  WORDSWORTH. 

age  to  age.  He  had,  on  the  contrary,  looked  for  the  im- 
mediate appearance  of  a  new  and  glorious  era  of  liberty .j 
.'  He  had  also  revolved  in  his  mind  "how  much  the  des- 
tiny'of  man  had  still  hung  upon  single  persons;"  and  if 
perchance  he  himself  were  destined  by  providence  to 
lead  the  people  through  the  present  crisis,  he  would  not 
thwart  the  designs  of  providence,  but  would  be  ready 
for  the  sacrifice.  Reluctantly  indeed,  then,  did  he  obey 
the  summons  that  called  him  back  to  England.  When 
once  at  home,  he  was  unable  to  act,  but  was  given  much 
time  to  meditate.  Then  it  was  that  the  full  power  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Revolution  reverberated  through  his 
whole  sensitive  nature.  His  senses  and  feelings  and 
moral  being  were  as  alive  to  the  issues  of  the  Revolu- 
tion as  they  had  ever  been  to  the  forces  of  nature.  He 
was  filled  with  the  highest  hopes  and  the  most  sanguine 
aspirations;  but  these  hopes  and  aspirations  were  soon 
doomed  to  disappointment.  It  was  only  a  few  months 
after  this  that  England  declared  war  against  the  French 
Revolutionists,  and  Wordsworth's  moral  nature  was  given 
its  first  great  shock: 

No  shock 
Given  to  my  moral  nature  had  I  known 
Down  to  that  very  moment;  neither  lapse 
Nor  turn  of  sentiment  that  might  be  named 
A  revolution,  save  at  this  one  time ; 
All  else  was  progress  on  the  self-same  path 
On  which,  with  a  diversity  of  pace 
I  had  been  travelling;  this  a  stride  at  once 
Into  another  region." 

But  the  stride  was  not  as  swift  as  one  would  surmise 
from  this  passage.  Wordsworth's  affections  for  his  na- 
tive country  and  his  native  soil  were  of  slow  growth 


""Prelude"  Bk.  X. 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  57 

and  were  deeply  rooted.  And  slowly  and  painfully  his 
alienation  wrought  itself  into  his  character. 

But  a  second  shock  was  awaiting  him.  It  came  when 
the  French  Revolutionists  took  aggressive  steps  in  sub- 
duing the  efforts  made  for  liberty  in  Switzerland.  France 
herself  was  abandoning  the  cause  of  human  liberty,  and 
Wordsworth's  sympathies  were  alienated: 

Frenchmen  had  changed  a  war  of  self-defense 
For  one  of  conquest,  losing  sight  of  all 
Which  they  had  struggled  for." 

Cut  off  from  sympathy  with  his  own  country  and  with 
the  country  whose  cause  he  had  espoused,  he  was  thrown 
back  into  himself  more  violently  and  more  completely 
than  he  had  been  taken  out  of  himself.  For  a  number  of 
years  his  depression  was  as  great  as  his  hopes  and  as- 
pirations had  been  high.  Were  all  his  aspirations  for 
the  relief  of  suft'ering  humanity  vain  and  foolish?  Were 
there  no  grounds  at  all  for  the  confidence  he  placed  in 
human  good?  Was  he,  then,  utterly  wrong  in  his  social 
and  political  ideals,  and  was  life  after  all  nothing  but  an 
empty  mockery?  These  questions  demanded  answers. 
For  Wordsworth  there  were  just  one  method  of  finding 
answers  to  them  and  of  escaping  from  his  depression,  the 
method,  namely,  of  associating  with  the  simple  life  and 
society  of  his  early  surroundings.  Unfortunately  this 
method  was  remote  from  his  thoughts  at  first  and  he 
attempted  another  way  of  escape.  He  tried  to  find  solace 
for  his  tempest-tossed  soul  in  the  speculative  philoso- 
phies of  his  day : 

This  was  the  time,  when,  all  things  tending  fast 

To  depravation,  speculative  schemes — 

That  promised  to  abstract  the  hopes  of  Man 


"Prelude,"  Bk.  XI. 


58  WORDSWORTH. 

Out  of  his  feelings,  to  be  fixed  thenceforth 
Forever  in  a  purer  element — 
Found  ready  welcome." 

But  in  that  speculative  scheming  which  promised  to  ab- 
stract the  hopes  of  Man  out  of  his  feelings  Wordsworth 
was  wholly  outside  of  his  natural  sphere.  Perhaps  none 
of  the  world's  great  geniuses  have  been  more  helpless 
than  Wordsworth  in  mere  abstract  speculation.  Here 
he  was  not  only  "out  of  the  pale  of  love,"  his  sentiment 
^'soured  and  corrupted,  upwards  to  the  source,"  but  he 
was  really  doing  violence  to  his  nature,  his  affections,  and 
his  powers.  And  the  result  of  this  prolonged  experience 
was  that  he  lost 

All  feeling  of  conviction,  and,  in  fine, 
Sick,  wearied  out  with  contrarieties, 
Yielded  up  moral  questions  in  despair." 

This  was  the  "soul's  last  and  lowest  ebb,"  and  he  turned 
for  a  time  to  the  study  of  abstract  science  with  the  faint 
hope  that  his  mind  might  be  drawn  away  from  the  dark 
moral  questions  that  had  haunted  it. 

But  now  he  had  come  to  live  with  his  sister,  and  her 
companionship,  together  with  the  surroundings  of  simple 
life  and  nature,  began  to  be  a  healing  balm  to  the  wounds 
of  his  mind,  and  gradually,  as  by  inches,  he  recovered 
from  his  depression.  As  the  process  went  on,  memories 
of  his  early  childhood  joys,  sweet  and  strong,  came  troop- 
ing into  his  mind.  Associations  with  familiar  haunts  of 
childhood  vividly  recalled  many  memories  that  had  been 
these  years  slumbering  but  half  consciously  in  his  mind. 
In  the  presence  of  these  new  joys  of  childhood  memo- 


""Prelude,"  Bk.  XI. 
""Prelude."  Bk.  XI. 


MEMORY   AND    WILL.  59 

ries,  the  immediate  past  became  almost  a  blank  to  him. 
His  voluntary  indifference  to  his  college  experiences  and 
the  tragic  reaction  of  his  interest  in  the  Revolution 
wrought  together  to  cut  his  life,  as  it  were,  in  twain,  and 
the  days  of  his  childhood  stood  out  in  bold  relief  from  the 
rest  of  his  life.  They  were  now  the  only  memories  of 
the  past  that  he  could  associate  with  all  that  he  held  most 
dear.  Separated  from  him  in  point  of  time,  they  stood 
in  his  mind  as  an  aggregate  whole  distinctly  apart  from 
his  ideas  and  images  of  immediate  perception.  "So  wide 
appears  the  vacancy  between  me  and  those  days,"  it  will 
be  remembered  the  passage  runs,  "that  often  do  I 
seem  two  consciousnesses,  conscious  of  myself  and  of 
some  other  Being."  What  a  unique  and  interesting  bit 
of  psychology  is  this  when  viewed  in  the  right  perspect- 
ive! 

Since  the  experiences  of  childhood  were  the  only  ex- 
periences that  had  not  played  him  false  he  would  cling 
to  them  as  to  life,  and  with  that  frugality  of  mind  which 
loses  no  opportunities,  he  would  turn  them  to  the  best 
account.     So  he  cherished  them  and  nurtured  them  all 
back  to  life,  and  they  became  to  him  a  living  reality. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  then,  as  he  came  back  into 
the  same  surroundings  and  atmosphere  in  which  he  had 
\   spent   his   passionate   life  of   childhood,   and   heard    the 
1  same  sounds  and  saw  the  same  sights  over  again  whicli 
1  he   had    seen   and    heard    in    tliose   early    days,    that   he 
would  make  one  of  his  characters  in  a  poem  say: 

My  eyes  are  dim  with  childish  tears. 
My  heart  is  idly  stirred, 
For  the  same  sound  is  in  my  ears 
Which  in  those  days  I  heard  : — '* 


"The  Fountain." 


60  WORDSWORTH. 

nor  that  in  many  another  poem  written  soon  after  his 
recovery  from  the  depression  of  the  Revolution  his  mind 
would  constantly  slip  back  to  the  time  of  childhood,  which 
he  now  believed  held  the  key  to  the  secret  of  the  pro- 
foundest  meanings  of  life: 

Our  childhood  sits, 
Our  simple  childhood,  sits  upon  a  throne 
That  hath  more  power  than  all  the  elements, 
I  guess  not  what  this  tells  of  Being  past, 
Nor  what  it  augurs  of  the  life  to  come." 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  remembered  instincts  and 
intuitions  of  childhood  were  made  to  stand  out  distinctly 
in  his  consciousness  and  to  furnish  to  his  will  a  direct 
path  to  the  eternal. 


II. 


\^ Since  Wordsworth's  life  of  childhood  v/as  almost 
wholly  a  life  of  love  for  natural  objects,  his  return  to 
the  memories  of  childhood  was  simultaneous  with  his 
returning  interest  in  nature.  Hence  these  two  experi- 
ences of  his  are  inextricably  bound  up  with  each  other, 
and  we  only  speak  of  them  separately  for  the  purpose  of 
exposition.  In  his  essay  on  Wordsworth's  Ethics,  Les- 
lie Stephen  says,  "The  great  problem  of  life,  that  is,  as 
he  conceives  it,  is  to  secure  continuity  between  the  pe- 
riod at  which  we  are  guided  by  half-conscious  instincts, 
and  that  in  which  man  is  able  to  supply  the  place  of  those 
primitive  impulses  by  reasoned  conviction.    This  is  the 


"Prelude,"  Bk.  V. 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  6l 

thought  which  comes  over  and  over  again  in  his  deepest 
poems  and  round  which  all  his  teachings  center."  :  It 
would  perhaps  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  a  great  many 
poems  written  soon  after  his  recovery  from  the  depress- 
ing effects  of  the  French  Revolution,  touch  upon  this 
idea;  that  in  the  light  of  the  unfoldment  of  Wordsworth's 
character  and  the  revolutionary  times  through  which  he 
had  just  passed,  it  was  peculiarly  necessary  for  him  to 
attempt  a  unity  of  the  two  ends  of  his  life  that  had  been 
almost  broken  asunder;  and  that,  instead  of  attempting 
to  find  a  continuity  between  the  instincts  of  childhoqd 
and  the  reason  of  man  as  such,  Wordsworth,  who  had 
been  thoroughly  convinced  of  the  absolute  hollowness  of 
rationalism  and  of  all  abstract  speculation,  was  really  at- 
tempting either  to  transcend  reason  or  to  level  it  down  to 
the  basis  of  childhood  experiences  themselves.  Words- 
worth was  now  wholly  on  the  side  of  the  intuitionists,  and 
he  would  give  no  cjuarter  to  the  rationalists.  He  carried 
the  revolutionary  method  and  spirit  with  him.  Though 
he  may  have  become  a  "lost  leader"  from  the  political 
point  of  view,  he  had  no  intentions  of  giving  up  revolu- 
tionary leadership  in  other  fields.  He  fell  back  upon  his 
personal  experiences  as  a  basis  for  operation.  He  be- 
lieved that  the  experiences  of  his  childhood  were  valid 
and  he  would  dare  to  make  the  most  of  them.  •^ 

Here  Wordsworth  comes  into  harmony  with  the 
movement  in  English  Literature  called  the  Romantic 
movement.  The  Romantic  movement  can  in  general  be 
defined  only  in  negative  terms.  If  there  was  one  quality, 
however,  that  all  the  leaders  of  the  movement  possessed, 
it  was  the  insistence  on  the  expression  of  liberty  and  per- 
sonal experience.  These  experiences  were  as  varied  as 
the  individuals  engaged  in  the  movement,  and  that  is 
why  the  movement  has  no  other  important  quality  com- 


62  WORDSWORTH. 

men  to  all  its  leaders.  But  this  spirit  of  insistence  on 
the  expression  of  personal  experience  gave  Wordsworth 
the  courage  of  his  convictions;  and  had  it  not  been  so, 
perhaps  those  strange  and  beautiful  raptures  of  his  child- 
hood would  have  never  been  brought  to  light.  It  must 
not  be  supposed,  however,  that  he  was  acting  with  a  con- 
scious gusto  in  the  matter.  He  was  being  deeply  moved 
by  the  spirit  of  his  times,  and  his  conscious  will  wrought 
in  harmony  with  that  spirit.  He  was  in  dead  earnest. 
The  robe  of  the  prophet  had  now  fallen  upon  him.  He 
had  become  a  mystic  and  a  seer.  He  was  now  formulat- 
ing his  poetic  principles  both  in  prose  and  in  verse.  He 
had  said  that  the  poet,  like  the  prophet,  has  "a  sense  that 
fits  him  to  perceive  objects  unseen  before."  His  mind 
ranged  down  the  scale  of  thought  to  the  instincts  and 
impulses  of  childhood ;  it  ranged  up  the  scale  through 
reasoning  to  a  transcendental  experience.  And  these 
two  remote  ends  of  experience,  he  felt,  met  in  a  harmony 
of  truth  in  one's  immediate  experience  of  memory,  or 
recollection.  And  so  the  memories  of  childhood,  which 
had  been  rejected  by  the  builders,  became  one  of  the 
foundation  stones  in  his  experiment  of  life. 
,  These  memories  of  childhood,  then,  were  for  Words- 
worth no  mere  poetic  imaginings,  but  they  stood  in  his 
mind  as  a  living  reality.  They  were  for  him  the  source 
of  joy,  freedom,  and  intimations  of  immortality.  In  late 
years  once,  it  is  true,  in  a  very  scientific  and  unpoetic 
frame  of  mind,  Wordsworth  declared  that  in  his  child- 
hood he  was  of  a  "stiff,  moody,  violent  temper."  No 
doubt  this  is  scientifically  and  unpoetically  accurate.  But 
according  to  his  theory  now,  there  was  beneath  this 
moody  and  unbending  self,  another  and  deeper  self  in 
the  child,  not  tainted  with  original  sin  but  invested  with 
glorious  and  heavenly  attributes ;  and  the  experiences  of 


MKMORV    AND    WII.I,.  63 

this  deeper  self  of  the  child  furnished  the  material  for 
the  will  and  memory  to  act  upon.  It  cannot  be  stated 
too  early  that  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  mystic  is 
that  he  insists  upon  the  validity  of  immediate  experience. 
Wordsworth,  it  will  be  remembered,  said  that  an  early 
emotion  may  be  contemplated  in  tranquillity  "till,  by  a 
species  of  reaction,  the  tranquillity  gradually  disappears, 
and  an  emotion,  kindred  to  that  which  was  before  the 
subject  of  contemplation,  is  gradually  produced,  and  does 
itself  actually  exist  in  the  mind."  His  will,  focusing  his 
feelings  upon  some  past  experience,  produces  an  emotion 
that  does  actually  exist  in  the  mind  and  has  immediate 
validity.  In  this  sense,  a  memory  image  or  an  imaginat- 
ive picture  is  as  valuable  to  the  mind  as  an  actual  per- 
ceptive image.  This  is  characteristic  of  much  of  Words- 
worth's experience.  Witness  one  of  many  examples  that 
might  be  given: 

That  very  day, 

From  a  bare  ridge  we  also  first  beheld 

Unveiled  the  summit  of  Mont  Blanc,  and  grieved 

To  have  a  soulless  image  on  the  eye 

That  had  usurped  upon  a  living  thought 

That  never  more  could  be.^ 

The  "living  thought"  is  to  be  valued  more  than  the  "soul- 
less image  on  the  eye."  The  important  point  to  seize  is 
that  a  memory  image  is  to  be  valued  for  its  own  sake.  So, 
upon  the  most  sacred  experiences  of  his  past,  Words- 
worth long  and  earnestly  focused  his  feelings  and  imag- 
inative thouglit  until,  around  these  experiences  as  a  cen- 
ter, there  irradiated  a  dome  of  light  which  he  called  the 
golden  age,  heaven,  immortality.  These  glorified  present 
memory  experiences   which  had  their  concrete  basis  in 


'"Prelude,"  Bk.  VI. 


64  WORDSWORTH. 

childhood  were  what  Wordsworth  prized.  They  brought 
him  joy,  a  deep  sense  of  freedom,  and  intimations  of 
immortahty. 

Immortahty  is  at  best  a  vague  and  shadowy  thing  for 
us  here  below.  We  can  never  do  more  than  speculate 
about  it  on  this  side  the  grave.  We  can  only  have  inti- 
mations of  it.  We  can  see  it  only,  so  to  speak,  through 
a  key  hole ;  and  there  are  many  key  holes ;  and  it  mat- 
ters little  which  we  choose.  Naturally  we  choose  that 
which  appeals  most  to  our  experiences.  Wordsworth 
chose  the  key  hole  of  his  childhood  experiences.  Long 
and  earnestly  he  peered  through  it  into  the  shadowy  and 
invisible  world.  Often  he  thought  "of  Eternity,  of  first, 
and  last,  and  midst,  and  without  end,"  and  of  "life,  death, 
eternity !  momentous  themes ;"  and  he  could  not  guess 
what  our  childhood,  our  simple  childhood  "tells  of  Being 
past,  nor  what  it  augurs  of  the  life  to  come."  Joy,  free- 
dom, intimations  of  immortality — these  are  substantial 
results  in  the  experiment  of  life.  And  since  our  child- 
hood,  which  "sits  upon  a  throne  that  hath  more  power 
than  all  the  elements,"  is  the  substantial  basis  upon  which 
they  rest,  the  memories  of  childhood  have  absolute  valid- 
ity in  Wordsworth's  scheme  of  life. 

On  the  question  of  the  ultimate  meaning  and  validity 
of  Wordsworth's  theory  of  childhood  memories,  critics 
differ.  Because  of  the  personal  nature  of  the  question, 
tempermental  differences  will  enter  into  the  opinions  of 
those  who  judge.  Perhaps  the  only  point  upon  which 
there  can  be  an  agreement  of  opinion  is  that  a  number 
of  passages,  as,  for  instance,  the  eighth  stanza  of  "Inti- 
mations of  Immortality,"  taken  singly  cannot  be  accepted 
at  their  face  value.  They  must  be  considered  as  polem- 
ical and  exaggerated  statements  of  a  well  enough  defined 
principle  that  underlies  them.     The  reason  for  these  ex- 


MEMORY    AND    Wir.I..  65 

aggerations  lies  in  Wordsworth's  revolutionary  zeal  in 
opposing  abstract  speculation  and  logical  reason,  in  his 
vigorous  defence  of  a  doctrine  opposed  to  cold-hearted 
science,  that  "false  secondary  power  by  which  we  multiply 
distinctions/'  Not  that  he  was  opposed  to  scientific 
facts  as  facts.  No  one  was  a  closer  and  more  careful 
observer  of  the  habits  and  conduct  of  animals,  children, 
and  mature  human  beings.  But  the  whole  energy  of  his 
mind  was  leveled  against  dry  scientific  and  speculative 
systems ;  and  in  his  fervor  to  state  his  own  positive  con- 
victions, he  fell  into  making  exaggerated  statements.  In- 
cident to  these  exaggerations,  there  is  sometimes  a  lack  of 
clearness  to  distinguish  between  childhood  experiences 
and  the  memories  of  those  experiences.  When  cleared  of 
its  exaggerations  and  its  ambiguity,  the  doctrine  is  essen- 
tially a  doctrine  of  recollection,  which  resolves  itself  real- 
ly into  the  simplicity  of  a  psychological  method  rather 
than  the  dignity  of  a  philosophical  system.  The  child  is 
not  really  the  philosopher,  in  esse,  but  is  the  philosopher, 
in  posse.  He  possesses  fresh  and  divine  potencies  which, 
if  conserved  and  transmuted  by  the  power  of  volition, 
will  constitute  the  solid  substance  in  the  experience  of 
the  philosopher  that  is  to  be. 

Reduced,  then,  to  its  normal  proportions,  what  is  the 
ultimate  meaning  and  validity  of  this  doctrine?  Here  it 
is  that  the  widest  difference  of  critical  opinion  prevails, 
and  perhaps  will  always  continue  to  prevail,  due  mainly 
to  personal  preferences.  It  all  depends  upon  the  point 
of  view.  To  the  hard-headed  reasoner  there  is  little 
in  this  doctrine  that  commends  itself.  He  w^ill  insist  that 
it  must  be  submitted  to  the  arbitrament  of  scientific  fact. 
It  is  certain  that  in  childhood  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
impotence.  The  perceptive  faculties  are  not  trained. 
The  imagination  is  crude.     Thougiit  is  embryonic.     To 


66  WORDSWORTH. 

be  sure,  in  childhood  there  is  innocenc}-  and  sweetness. 
But  it  is  the  innocency  of  ignorance  and  the  sweetness  of 
inexperience.  Besides  in  some  types  of  childhood,  at 
least,  there  is  plenty  of  anger,  spiteful  jealousies,  wrang- 
ling, screaming,  and  getting  red  in  the  face.  And  it  is 
precisely  the  memory  of  these  sharp  and  thorny  exper- 
iences that  rankles  in  the  mind  in  after  years.  True  in- 
deed is  all  this,  Wordsworth  would  reply.  He  himself 
had  visitings  of  those  moodier  hours.  He  had  experi- 
enced all  the  manifest  weaknesses  of  childhood.  He  would 
not  write  himself  down  a  polished  and  philosophical 
little  scholar.  He  would  not  put  a  false  veneer  on  the 
facts.  They  are  written  large  in  the  "Prelude,"  so  that 
he  that  runs  may  read.  But  deeper  and  more  vital  facts 
than  these  Wordsworth  also  found  in  his  childhood.  His 
childhood,  at  bottom,  he  discovered  was  a  vconderful 
compact  of  instincts  and  impulses  that  defied  all  analy- 
sis. There  were  gleams  of  light  at  opportune  times. 
There  were  occasional  flashes  of  insight  into  the  life  of 
things.  His  soul,  like  every  other  serious  soul,  had  known 
its  god-like  hours : 

There's  not  a  man 
That  lives  who  hath  not  known  his  god-Hke  hours, 
And  feels  not  what  an  empire  we  inherit, 
As  natural  beings  in  the  strength  of  Nature.^' 

It  does  not  require  the  occult  wisdom  of  a  philosopher 
to  distinguish  between  these  higher  moments  of  inspira- 
tion and  the  lower  moods  of  sullenness.  It  lies  within 
the  power  of  every  individual's  will  and  memory  to  re- 
create the  exalted  moments  of  life  until  they  are  lived 
over  again  in  the  mind.  This,  then,  may  become  a  uni- 
versal method  of  life  and  a  panacea  for  its  ills. 


'"Prelude"  Bk.  III. 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  67 

There  is.  however,  a  still  more  serious  objection  to 
be  made  from  the  standpoint  of  scientific  fact.  Our  per- 
spective of  childhood  naturally  tends  to  become  untrue. 
There  is  a  natural  inclination  in  us  to  give  additional 
colors  to  the  joys  and  pleasures  of  the  past.  In  his  zeal 
to  revive  his  memories  of  childhood  experiences,  Words- 
worth did  not  guard  against  the  possible  deception  that 
some  of  them  might  have  been  "called  to  life  by  after- 
meditation."  And,  therefore,  he  unconsciously  drifted 
into  an  attitude  toward  his  childhood  experiences  that  is 
essentially  unscientific  and  seems  to  be  based  on  prejudice. 
To  a  disinterested  person  this  natural  inclination  of  the 
mind  can  easily  be  illustrated  from  experience.  I  remem- 
ber the  school-house  in  ■which  I  attended  school  as  a 
child.  It  was  the  largest  school-house  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. To  me  it  seemed  spacious  indeed.  I  always  carried 
an  idea  of  its  spaciousness  with  me.  Some  years  after 
I  had  left  the  school-house  I  came  back  to  it.  Then  it  ap- 
peared to  me  not  spacious,  but  small  and  dingy.  My 
memory  image  that  I  had  carried  with  me  these  years 
was  shattered.  ]\Iost  of  our  early  memory  images,  if 
they  could  be  tested  likewise,  would  be  shattered.  From 
the  scientific  standpoint,  then.  Wordsworth  seemed  to  take 
a  prejudicial  position,  for  he  deliberately  chose  not  to 
have  his  memory  images  shattered.  l.>ut  he  would  not,  of 
course,  defend  this  position  from  the  standpoint  of  prej- 
udice ;  he  would  defend  it  from  the  standpoint  of  sub- 
jective experience.  He  would  not  have  the  vision  from 
within  invaded  and  outdone  by  the  outward  facts  of 
hfe: 

We  have  a  vision  of  our  own ; 

Ah  I  why  should  we  undo  it?" 


""Yarrow  Unvisited.'' 


68  WORDSWORTH. 

The  immediate  psychic  entity  in  the  form  of  a  memory 
image  was  to  him  as  valuable  as  the  original  experience 
from  which  that  memory  image  took  its  rise.  Though 
showing  a  reverent  attitude  toward  the  outward  and 
verifiable  facts  of  science,  he  showed  a  greater  reverence 
for  the  immediate  facts  of  consciousness.  Whether  an 
imaginative  picture,  or  a  memory  image,  or  a  transfused 
or  interfused  presence,  the  inner  fact  of  consciousness 
held  priority  of  validity  in  his  mind.  And  at  this  point, 
Wordsworth,  the  mystic,  parts  company  with  those  who 
insist  on  objective  standards  of  scientific  accuracy  to  de- 
cide what  is  true  reality.  It  is  exactly  on  these  grounds 
of  difference  that  critics  are  divided  as  to  the  ultimate 
value  of  Wordsworth's  theory  of  childhood  memories. 

This  same  divergence,  based  on  two  widely  different 
methods  of  approaching  the  problems  of  life,  is  mani- 
fested in  the  criticism  on  the  famous  "Ode  on  Intima- 
tions of  Immortality."  The  conclusion,  it  may  be  argued, 
that  there  is  a  future  life,  is  based  on  the  hypothesis  that 
heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy,  which  latter  hypothe- 
sis, being  the  major  premise,  ought  to  be  an  incontro- 
vertible fact — a  thing  which  most  of  us  are  quite  un- 
willing to  admit.  Wordsworth  reasons  in  a  circle  and 
there  is  no  logical  foundation  for  his  thought.  So  says 
the  man  of  logical  thought  and  of  scientific  accuracy. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  argued  that  in  the  immortal 
life  which  is  a  new  state  of  existence,  there  may  be  a 
complete  transcendence  of  our  known  order  of  time. 
Accordingly  then,  in  eternity  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
time.  Before  and  after,  past  and  present,  are  terms  not 
in  the  vocabulary  of  angels  and  the  immortals. 

This  idea  is  presented  more  clearly  in  a  passage  in 
the  Fourteenth  Book  of  the  "Prelude."    One  night  after 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  69 

a  glorious  vision  from  the  top  of  a  mountain  in  which 
Wordsworth  says 

The  Moon  hung  naked  in  a  firmament 
Of  azure  without  cloud,  and  at  my  feet 
Rested  a  silent  sea  of  hoary  mist — 

after  this  vision  had  partially  dissolved  into  air,  it  ap- 
peared to  him  the  "type  of  a  majestic  intellect": 

There  I  beheld  the  emblem  of  a  mind 
That  feeds  upon  infmity,  that  broods 
Over  the  dark  abyss,  intent  to  hear 
Its  voices  issuing  forth  to  silent  light 
In  one  continuous  stream. 

And  like  unto  this  majestic  intellect  that  feeds  upon  in- 
finity and  that  broods  over  the  dark  abyss,  are  the  higher 
minds  of  human  beings  when  inspired,  which  minds  live 
in  a  world  of  life, 

By  sensible  impressions  not  enthralled. 

But  by  their  quickening  impulse  made  more  prompt 

To  hold  fit  converse  with  the  spiritual  world. 

And  with  the  generations  of  mankind 

Spread  over  time,  past,  present,  and  to  come, 

Age  after  age.,  till  Time  shall  be  no  more. 

Just  as  time — past,  present,  and  to  come — is  nothing 
to  the  inspired  mind  that  can  hold  lit  converse  with  the 
spiritual  world,  so  our  known  order  of  time  seems  to  be 
transcended  in  the  Ode  in  which  Wordsworth  reached 
his  highest  point  of  inspiration.  We  have  here,  then, 
practically  nothing  to  do  with  pre-existence  and  future 
life  as  such — it  is  simply  one  ever-present  eternal  state. 
And  why  should  not  the  stray  gleams  of  the  pure  white 
light  of  childhood  intimate  to  us,  as  strongly  as  does  any 
other  phase  of  our  experience,  the  life  immortal? 


70  WORDSWORTH. 

Or,  waiving  the  point  of  actual  transcendence  of  time, 
and  granting  that  the  poem  is  of  a  sufficiently  earthly 
mould  to  have  remained  within  the  regular  mudane  order 
of  time,  we  can  still  maintain  that  Wordsworth's  grounds 
are  perfectly  tenable  from  the  intuitionist's  or  mystical 
standpoint.  The  fulcrum,  so  to  speak,  upon  which  the 
mind  turns  from  pre-existence  to  the  future  life,  is  not  the 
objective  experience  represented  in  the  child,  but  the 
subjective  immediate  memory  experience  of  the  poet. 
From  the  standpoints  of  tone,  feeling,  motive,  and  mean- 
ing of  the  poem  as  a  whole,  the  passage, 

O  joy!  ttiat  in  our  embers 
Is  something  that  doth  live — 

is  much  more  nearly  at  the  core  of  it  than  the  passage, 
Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting. 

In  after  years  Wordsworth  explained  to  his  readers  that 
he  had  used  the  theory  of  pre-existence  merely  as  a  de- 
vice, making  the  best  of  it  that  he  could  as  a  poet.*  Some 
have  said  that  the  explanation  was  due  to  the  weakness 
of  old  age;  it  would  be  more  fair  perhaps  to  say  that  it 
was  due  to  the  sanity  of  old  age.  Leslie  Stephen  says 
Wordsworth  took  unnecessary  pains  in  making  the  ex- 
planation. It  may  be  so,  but  judging  from  the  extraordi- 
nary proneness  of  human  beings  to  clutch  at  something 
outward  and  objective,  something  away  from  themselves, 
as  a  basis  for  reasoning  and  faith,  Wordsworth's  admoni- 
tion is  not  at  all  superfluous.  He  publicly  said  of  the 
theory  that  "it  is  far  too  shadowy  a  notion  to  be  recom- 
mended to  faith,  as  more  than  an  element  in  our  instincts 
of  immortality."  But  in  spite  of  his  disclaiming  all 
rights  to  the  theory,  critics  have  again  and  again  foisted 


*See  Note  4,  Appendix. 


MEMORY    AND    WILI..  ?! 

it  upon  him  as  thougli  there  were  something  distinctly 
Wordsworthian  in  it. 

In  short,  Wordsworth's  theory  of  childhood  memo- 
ries has  constantly  been  discussed  as  though  the  ques- 
tion of  origin  were  the  prime  question  to  decide.  Un- 
doubtedly the  whole  trend  of  modern  thought  on  the 
question  of  origin  is  to  explain  the  marvellous  illumi- 
nations that  come  to  children  as  the  reverberations  of 
past  life  in  its  physical  and  psychical  evolution.  A  mod- 
ern scientist,  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall,  who  of  all  living  men 
has  perhaps  collected  the  largest  number  of  facts  con- 
cerning childhood  and  adolescence,  speaks  like  a  poet,  yet 
speaks  with  the  authority  of  science  when  he  says, — 
"Whatever  soul-stuflf  may  or  may  not  be,  it  is  most  sus- 
ceptible and  responsive  to  all  present  influences,  and  also,, 
in  a  yet  far  deeper  sense,  most  pervaded  with  reverbera- 
tions from  an  innumerable  past ;"  and  again, — "We  are 
influenced  in  our  deeper,  more  temperamental  dispositions 
by  the  life-habits  and  codes  of  conduct  of  we  know  not 
what  innumerable  hosts  of  ancestors,  which  like  a  cloud 
of  witnesses  are  present  through  our  lives ;  and  our 
souls  are  echo  chambers  in  which  their  whispers  rever- 
berate."-^ No  doubt  the  pre-existent  theory  must  grad- 
ually give  way  to  the  more  scientific  theory.  Nor  does 
this  latter  theory  in  any  way  degrade  the  value  and  mean- 
ing of  childhood  memories.  For  the  theory  in  question 
is  influenced  by  a  second  trend  of  modern  thought,  the 
trend  namely,  to  distinguish  sharply  between  two  kinds 
of  judgments — existential  and  spiritual.  The  first  is  a 
judgment  of  origin,  the  second  of  value.  Since  these 
two  judgments  are  independent  of  each  other,  the  value 
of  a  thing  cannot  be  determined  by  its  origin,  whether 


'"Aolcscence,"  Vol.  II,  Chap.  X. 


72  WORDSWORTH. 

that  origin  be  lowly  or  high.  Whether  the  child  is  a 
product  of  a  long  physical  and  psychical  evolutionary 
process,  or  whether  its  soul  conies  directly  from  a  state 
of  spiritual  pre-existence,  its  present  spiritual  experience 
Tias  precisely  the  same  value.  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them,  not  by  their  roots."  And  with  this  latter 
conception  Wordsworth  was  thoroughly  in  harmony. 
Whatever  we  may  believe  about  the  origin  of  child  life, 
and  whatever  Wordsworth  may  have  believed,  it  was  "a. 
sense  of  the  indomitableness  of  the  spirit"  in  him  as  a 
child,  and  much  more  the  sense  of  the  volitional  and  in- 
domitable spirit  in  him  as  a  man,  which  he  felt  was  free 
and  which  would  not  and  could  not  die,  that  gave  life  and 
genuineness  to  the  Ode.  The  fame  of  the  Ode  cannot 
rest  on  any  judgment  concerning  the  origin  of  child  life. 
Although  Wordsworth  was  intellectually  curious 
enough  to  wish  to  know  the  origin  of  life,  his  chief  inter- 
est centered  in  the  operations  of  his  will  and  memory  up- 
on his  childhood  experiences,  for  the  purpose  of  pro- 
ducing an  immediate  excitation  in  his  mind.  And,  in  the 
moment  of  inspiration,  he  joined  the  memories  of  in- 
stinctive and  impulsive  childhood  with  an  experience  that 
transcended  reason  and  time.  But  this  new  experience 
defies  any  sensible  and  rational  explanation,  says  the  man 
of  a  scientific  temper  of  mind.  Be  it  so ;  and  since  it 
must  be  so,  men  of  this  temper  of  mind  will  always  find 
in  Wordsworth  a  rock  of  ofifense,  after  a  certain  point 
has  been  reached.  They  will  find  a  permanent  satisfac- 
tion in  Jefifrey's  and  Macaulay's  common  sense  way  of 
dealing  with  Wordsworth.  On  the  other  hand,  men 
whose  temperaments  are  like  that  of  Wordsworth  will  al- 
ways rate  the  man  and  his  doctrine  of  childhood  memo- 
ries extremely  high.  The  intensity  with  which  he  focus- 
ed his  mind  upon  his  childhood  experiences,  and  the  still 


MEMORY    AND    WILL.  73 

greater  intensity  witli  which  he  penetrated  the  mysterious 
truths  of  consciousness  to  which  the  memories  of  those 
experiences  were  an  inlet,  will  be  to  these  critics  but  a 
natural  complement  to  his  extraordinary  grasp  on  the 
essential  and  fudamental  facts  of  every  day  life,  and  to 
his  power  of  extracting  out  of  the  very  pain  and  sorrow 
and  tumult  of  that  life,  deep  pleasure,  joy,  and  an  abiding 
sense  of  spiritual  freedom. 

We  have  now  seen  that  Wordsworth  believed  in  the 
creative  power  and  the  freedom  of  the  human  mind,  and 
that  he  resolutely  turned  his  face  toward  the  deep  and 
the  mysterious  in  man  and  the  deep  and  the  mysterious 
in  the  world.  We  have  seen  that  he  found  a  path  directly 
to  the  eternal  through  the  power  of  his  will  acting  upon 
his  childhood  memories.  We  have  also  seen  that  the 
experiences  of  childhood  that  had  value  for  him  were 
those  that  were  bound  up  with  his  interest  in  nature. 
We  have  had  abundant  proof  that,  in  his  effort  of  recol- 
lection to  produce  an  intense  excitation  in  his  mind,  there 
was  present  a  deep  strain  of  what  is  called  the  mystical. 
We  are  now  prepared  to  take  this  principle  of  mysticism 
more  fully  into  account. 


CHAPTER  III 

WORDSWORTH:   FREEDO.AI   AND  MYSTICISM. 


By  the  volitional  intensity  and  the  innerness  of  the 
experience  of  recollection,  Wordsworth  produced  in  him- 
self a  deep  strain  of  the  mystical.  But  when  he  connect- 
ed outward  sense  perceptions  to  the  memory  of  child- 
hood experiences  there  was  present  a  still  deeper  strain 
of  the  mystical ;  and  when  he  attached  a  moral  value  to 
this  double  experience  of  memory  and  sense,  as  in  "Tin- 
tern  Abbey,"  the  full  tide  of  the  mystical  was  on. 

The  general  outline  of  thought  in  "Tintern  Abbey" 
is  as  follows : — First,  the  picture  of  the  mind  is  revived. 
The  landscape,  the  plots  of  cottage-ground,  the  orchard- 
tufts,  the  groves  and  copses,  the  hedge  rows,  "little  lines 
of  sportive  wood  run  wild,"  the  pastoral  farms,  the 
wreathes  of  smoke, — all  these  beauteous  forms,  through 
a  long  absence,  had  not  been  to  the  poet  as  a  landscape  to 
a  blind  man's  eye,  but  had  frequently  been  partially  re- 
vived in  his  mind.  But  now,  as  he  stood  in  the  very  pres- 
ence of  the  beauteous  forms  themselves,  the  memory  of 
them  was  revived  in  full  measure.  Secondly,  there  is  a 
development  of  immediate  sense  perceptions — percep- 
tions of 

The  meadows  and  the  woods, 
And  mountains;  and  of  all  that  we  behold 


FRKHDOM    AND    .MYSTICISM.  75 

From  this  green  earth,  of  all  the  mighty  world 
Of  eye  and  ear, — both  what  they  half  create, 
And  what  perceive. 

And  thirdly,  a  moral  value  is  given  to  this  double  expe- 
rience of  memory  and  sense  perceptions.  "Therefore  am 
I,"  he  says, 

Well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  nature  and  the  language  of  the  sense, 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  crisis  following  his 
overwrought  interest  in  the  Revolution,  Wordsworth 
considered  that  his  soul  had  attained  its  "last  and  lowest 
ebb"  when,  "wearied  out  with  contrarieties,"  he  "yielded 
up  moral  questions  in  despair."  But  it  is  fair  to  ask 
whether  Wordsworth  actually  gave  up  moral  cjuestions 
completely.  It  is  to  be  suspected  rather  that  his  nature 
so  imperatively  demanded  tnoral  solace  that  he  could  not 
give  up  the  moral  problem  at  all.  No  doubt  for  a  time 
he  made  conscious  efforts  to  avoid  the  contrarieties  of 
moral  issues ;  but  even  "The  Borderers,"  which  was  writ- 
ten in  his  despondency,  is  much  greater  as  a  study  in  the 
moral  nature  of  man  than  as  a  pla}'.  He  makes  Mar- 
maduke,  the  young  hero  of  the  play,  say  to  Oswald,  his 
tempter : 

Young  as  I  am,  I  might  go  forth  a  teacher, 
And  you  should  see  how  deeply  I  could  reason 
Of  love  in  all  its  shapes,  beginnings,  ends ; 
Of  moral  qualities  in  their  diverse  aspects; 
Of  actions,  and  their  laws  and  tendencies. 

And  so  Wordsworth  really  never  ceased  reasoning  about 
love  in  all  its  shapes,  of  moral  qualities,  and  of  actions ; 
and  the  poems  written  immediately  after  his   recovery 


76  WORDSWORTH. 

are  steeped  in  moral  sentiment.  In  the  poem  "To  my 
Sister"  the  mind  is  made  to  "drink  at  every  pore  the 
spirit  of  the  season"  and  the  heart  to  take  its  temper 
from  the  day,  and  both  heart  and  mind  are  attuned  to  the 
highest  law  of  morals — the  law  of  love.  In  "Expostula- 
tion and  Reply"  the  powers  of  nature — "this  mighty  sum 
of  things  forever  speaking" — give  energy  and  self-con- 
trol to  the  mind  that  submits  to  them  in  a  wise  passive- 
ness.  And  in  "The  Tables  Turned"  Nature  blesses  our 
hearts  and  minds  with  spontaneous  wisdom  and  with 
truth^^  Thus  these  poems  all  possess  an  unmistakable 
moral  temper,  and  the  source  of  their  strength  lies  in  their 
extracting  moral  nurture  from  the  "blessed  power  that 
rolls  about,  below,  above,"  from  drawing  upon  the  "ready 
wealth"  of  nature  and  allowing  her  to  be  the  teacher.  It 
may  be,  as  Morley  would  have  it,  that  to  some  persons  im- 
pulses from  vernal  woods  cannot  teach  anything  of  moral 
evil  or  of  good ;  but  they  greatly  err  who  maintain  that 
Wordsworth  did  not  find  this  the  prime  source  of  moral 
strength.  What  happened  to  Wordsworth,  then,  is  not 
that  he  gave  up  the  consideration  of  moral  questions, 
Vv'hich  was  impossible  to  a  nature  like  his,  but  that  he 
ceased  to  look  for  moral  strength  in  the  social  and  polit- 
ical philosophies  of  his  day.  And,  thrown  back  upon  the 
dignity  and  strength  of  his  own  inner  life,  he  revived  the 
memories  of  childhood,  joined  them  to  outward  sense 
perceptions,  and  in  that  double  process,  rediscovered 
himself — his  moral  nature. 

From  thenceforth  those  memory  and  sense  impres- 
sions became  the  vehicle  of  expression  for  his  inner  mor- 
al life.  It  was  through  his  reaction,  therefore,  on  the 
French  Revolution  that  Wordsworth's  eyes  were  opened, 
and  that  his  peculiar  moral  principles  were  formulated. 
And,  carrying  the  revolutionary  method  and  spirit  with 


FREEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  77 

him,  he  would  teach  men  the  new  principles.  He  would 
readjust  society  on  a  new  and  simple  basis,  on  the  basis  of 
the  primal  affections  and  moral  strength  derived  through 
memory  and  sense  from  the  powers  of  nature.  Tims, 
with  the  intensity  and  whole-heartedness  characteristic 
of  Revolutionary  leaders.  Wordsworth  became  the  proph- 
et and  leader  of  a  new  moral  and  revolutionary  move- 
ment. 

?3ut  this  synthesis  of  memory  images,  sense  percep- 
tions, and  a  moral  idea  by  a  mind  that  is  volitional  and 
passionate,  is  eminently  productive  of  a  mystical  state 
of  mind.  When  the  inner  moral  world,  exalted  un<ler 
the  influence  of  memory,  is  voluntarily  drawn  into 
unity  with  the  outer  world  the  mystical  always  results. 
The  reason  is  that  this  activity  of  tlie  mind  produces  a 
sense  of  inncrness  and  intensity,  and  a  sense  of  spiritual 
freedom;  and  these  qualities  are  the  life  of  mysticism. 
There  are  therefore  some  mystical  tendencies  in  every 
human  being ;  but  they  are  more  marked  in  some  individ- 
uals than  in  others.  In  Wordsworth  they  were  by  nature 
unusually  strong.  The  native  powers  of  his  mind — sen- 
sitiveness, passion,  and  volition — were  well  fitted  to  de- 
velop the  mystical.  In  his  earliest  childhood,  too.  he  un- 
wittingly made  elaborate  preparations  to  bring  on  the 
mystical  state. 

Again,  in  some  periods  of  history  more  than  in  others 
the  spirit  of  the  times  favors  the  development  of  the 
mystical.  The  age  of  Pope,  for  example,  with  its  aver- 
sion to  passion,  and  to  any  union  of  the  inner  and  the 
outer  life,  was  decidedly  unfavorable  to  its  development. 
If.  in  that  age.  a  young  person  Avere  possessed  by  nature 
with  strong  mystical  tendencies  the  spirit  of  the  times 
would  help  him  to  hush  them  up.  would  deaden  them  for 
him.   and   finally   destroy   them.     This   is   why  no  great 


78  WORDSWORTH. 

mystic  appeared  in  the  age  of  Pope.  The  age  of  Words- 
worth, on  the  contrary,  with  its  revolutionary  tendencies, 
with  its  efforts  at  the  readjustment  of  society  in  new  and 
strange  ways,  with  its  insistence  on  personal  freedom, 
and  with  its  powerful  emphasis  on  personal  convictions, 
was  emphatically  favorable  to  the  development  of  the 
mystical.  What  the  spirit  of  the  times  did  for  Words- 
worth was  to  encourage  him  to  bring  to  light  and  to  per- 
fect the  elaborate  mystical  practices  of  his  childhood.  In 
tracing  their  development,  then,  we  must  recur  again  to 
the  experiences  of  his  childhood. 

One  precaution,  however,  is  necessary  at  this  point. 
It  is  not  profitable  to  trace  this  development  closely  in 
the  sequence  of  time.  For  the  mystical  proper,  that  is, 
the  pure  mystical  state,  is  not  developed  gradually  in  the 
mind  and  then  permanently  possessed.  It  is  rather  a  state 
of  mind  that  is  arrived  at  occasionally,  and  held  trans- 
itorily, and  with  irregular  recurrence.  It  is  altogether 
too  intense  and  strained  to  be  permanently  possessed. 
What  is  more  important,  therefore,  is  to  note  in  its  devel- 
opment, the  degree  of  intensity  it  has  reached  at  any  giv- 
en point,  and  the  different  stages  of  its  development 
marked  by  those  degrees  of  intensity. 

The  simplest  rudiment  of  mystical  experience  is  based 
upon  the  most  common  experiences  of  humanity,  and 
is  developed  out  of  them.     It  deals  with 

Unshaped  half-human  thoughts 

Which  solitary  Nature  feeds 

'Mid  summer  storms  or  winter's  ice.^ 

Strange,  unshaped,  half-human  thoughts  come  to  all  of  us 
and  out  of  them  the  will  builds  its  mystic  temple.     The 


"Teter  Bell." 


FREEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  79 

heart  of  the  mystic,  on  the  basis  of  common  experience, 
tends  to 

Luxuriate  with  indifferent  things, 

Wasting  its  kindliness  on  stocks  and  stones, 

And  on  the  vacant  air.' 

The  following  characterization  of  Peter  Bell  is  univer- 
sally recognizable,  yet  it  expresses  such  rigidity  and  fix- 
edness of  attention  that  it  unmistakably  possesses  the 
rudiment  of  the  mystical  experience: 

There  was  a  hardness  in  his  cheek, 
There  was  a  hardness  in  his  eye, 
As  if  the  man  had  fixed  his  face, 
In  many  a  solitary  place, 
Against  the  wind  and  open  sky  P 

These  passages  represent  the  most  common  experiences, 
but  they  also  possess  the  germ  of  the  mystical  conscious- 
ness, the  suggestion  of  deeper  strains  of  fixed  attention. 
They  represent  the  very  beginnings  of  the  mystical  state 
of  mind. 

When,  however,  the  kindliness  that  is  wasted  "on 
stocks  and  stones,  and  on  the  vacant  air"  becomes  more 
intense,  when  the  face  that  is  fixed  "in  many  a  solitary 
place,  against  the  wind  and  open  sky"  becomes  more 
passionately  fixed,  then  a  higher  and  more  distinct  stage 
of  the  mystical  presence  is  recognizable,  and  it  becomes 
more  clearly  separated  from  other  experiences.  Not  only 
did  Wordsworth  as  a  lover  fix  his  eye  upon  the  moon 
that  descended  to  Lucy's  cot,  but  when  he  came  home 
from  school  on  vacation  and  lay  down  in  his  accustomed 
bed  he  tells  us  with  what  fixedness  he  aforetimes  had 
gazed  upon  the  moon : 


'"Nutting." 
"'Peter  Bell." 


80  WORDSWORTH, 

That  lowly  bed  whence  I  had  heard  the  wind 
Roar,  and  the  rain  beat  hard ;  where  I  so  oft 
Had  lain  awake  on  summer  nig'hts  to  watch 
The  moon  in  splendour  couched  among  the  leaves 
Of  a  tall  ash,  that  near  our  cottage  stood ; 
Had  watched  her  with  fixed  eyes  while  to  and  fro 
In  the  dark  summit  of  the  waving  tree 
She  rocked  with  every  impulse  of  the  breeze.* 

Even  the  grave  of  a  dead  companion  is  of  sufficient  in- 
terest to  arouse  the  active  bnt  mute  gazing  tendency : 

The  grassy  churchyard  hangs 
Upon  a  slope  above  the  village  school. 
And  through  that  churchyard  when  my  way  has  led 
On  summer  evenings,  I  believe  that  there 
A  long  half  hour  together  I  have  stood 
Mute,  looking  at  the  grave  in  which  he  lies !' 

Not  only  do  we  learn  that  Wordsworth  "gazed  and  gaz- 
ed" at  the  daffodils,  but  often  "gleams  of  sky  and  clouds 
and  intermingling  mountain  tops,  in  one  inseparable  glory 
clad,"  bring  on  the  rapt  gaze : 

On  the  fulgent  spectacle 
That  neither  passed  away  nor  changed,  I  gazed 
Enrapt." 

In  the  above  passages  the  common  qualities  are  volitional 
activity,  fixed  attention,  and  deep  stirrings  of  the  feehngs. 
They  are  well  on  the  way  toward  the  distinctly  mystical 
consciousness. 

A  representative  passage  of  a  more  highly  developed 
stage — a  stage  in  which  sense  perceptions  begin  to  pale 
in  the  intense  light  of  memory  and  vision,  and  in  which 


^"Prelude,"  Bk.  IV. 
'"Prelude,"  Bk.  V. 
^"Prelude,"  Bk.  X. 


FREICDO.M    AXD    MYSTICISM.  8l 

the  moral  and  spiritual  idea  is  present — is  the  follow- 
ing: 

I  would  stand. 
If  the  night  blackened  with  a  coming  storm, 
Beneath  some  rock,  listening  to  notes  that  arc 
The  ghostly  language  of  the  ancient  earth, 
Or  make  their  dim  abode  in  distant  winds. 
Thence  did  I  drink  the  visionary  power ; 
And  deem  not  profitless  those  fleeting  moods 
Of  shadowy  exultation.' 

And  the  reason  why  he  Hstens  so  intensely  and  deems 
the  exercise  profitable  is  that  the  "soul  retains  an  obscure 
sense  of  posssible  sublimity,"  and  that  it  is  through  such 
an  exercise  that  the  sense  of  its  sublimity  is  heightened. 
Here  memory,  sense  perceptions,  and  the  moral  idea  are 
beautifully  brought  together.  Likewise  in  the  exquisite 
passage : 

Oh,  then,  the  calm 
And  dead  still  water  lay  upon  my  mind 
Even  with  a  weight  of  pleasure,  and  the  sky. 
Never  before  so  beautiful,  sank  down 
Into  my  heart,  and  held  mc  like  a  dream  I' 

In  the  following  passage  the  light  of  sense  goes  out 
altogether  under  the  volitional  intensity  of  the  inner 
gaze,  and  the  outer  world  of  reality  becomes  "an  unsub- 
stantial faery  place:" 

And  sate  among  the  woods 
Alone  upon  some  jutting  eminence, 
At  the  first  gleam  of  dawn-light,  when  the  Vale, 

Yet  slumbering,  lay  in  utter  solitude 

Oft  in  these  moments  such  a  holy  calm 
Would  overspread  my  soul,  that  bodily  eyes 


•"Prelude,"  Bk.  II. 
'"Prelude,"  Bk.  11. 


82  WORDSWORTH, 

Were  utterly  forgotten,  and  what  I  saw- 
Appeared  like  something  in  myself,  a  dream, 
A  prospect  in  the  mind.* 

And  likewise  in  the  passage, 

But  to  my  conscious  soul  I  now  can  say — 
"I  recognize  thy  glory :"  in  such  strength 
Of  usurpation,  when  the  light  of  sense 
Goes  out,  but  with  a  flash  that  has  revealed 
The  invisible  world, — ^^ 

the  light  of  sense  goes  out  with  a  flash,  and,  in  a  flash, 
the  invisible  world,  a  new  order  of  moral  and  spiritual 
truth,  is  revealed;  physical  sense  is  transcended,  and  we 
have  duly  arrived  at  the  mystic's  rapturous  state  of  mind. 
Just  at  the  vanishing  point  of  the  senses  is  where  the 
mystical  proper,  the  pure  mystical,  begins.  And  the 
completest  expression  of  the  highest  stage  of  it  is  found 
in  a  passage  in  "Tintern  Abbey."  To  the  beauteous 
forms  that  through  a  long  absence  had  not  been  to  him 
like  a  landscape  to  a  blind  man's  eye,  Wordsworth  says 
he  owed  a  gift  of  sublime  aspect,  the  gift  of 

That  blessed  mood, 

In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery, 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 
Is  lightened : — that  serene  and  blessed  mood. 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, — 
Until,  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  bod}',  and  become  a  living  soul : 
While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things. 


"Prelude,"  Bk.  II. 
""Prelude,"  Bk.  VI. 


FREEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  83 

The  critics  have  been  loud  in  their  praise  of  tliis 
famous  passage.  Stedman,  for  example,  speaks  of  it  as 
having  been  produced  when  Wordsworth's  vision  pene- 
trated the  quintessence  of  nature,  and  when  he  was  "in 
his  very  highest  mood."  One  wonders  whether  after  the 
burden  of  the  mystery  and  tlic  heavy  and  tlie  weary 
weight  of  all  the  imintcUigible  world  is  lightened,  and 
after  the  motion  of  our  human  blood  is  almost  suspended 
and  we  are  laid  asleep  in  body — whether  then  our  being 
is  in  the  proper  condition  to  enter  the  very  highest  exper- 
ience known  to  man.  One  wonders  what  actually  is  seen 
when  "we  see  into  the  life  of  things."  One  naturally  asks 
^vliat  are  the  fruits  for  life  of  such  a  rare  experience. 
Wordsworth  himself  is  wholly  in  doubt  about  the  value 
of  the  experience  and  its  consequent  results,  for  he  im- 
mediately adds : 

If  this 

Be  but  a  vain  belief,  yet,  oh !  how  oft 

How  oft,  in  spirit,  have  I  turned  to  thee, 

O  sylvan  Wye!  thou  wanderer  thro'  the  woods. 

and  we  again  suddenly  find  ourselves  in  an  intelligible 
world. 

In  fact  what  has  generally  been  considered  contempla- 
tion par  excellence  is  contemplation  in  excess.  After 
having  committed  the  excess,  Wordsworth's  essential 
sanity  makes  him  retract  immediately  and  take  more  easily 
tenable  grounds.  The  passage,  however,  is  a  profound 
and  delicate  rendering  of  a  possible  and  somewhat  un- 
usual mood.  The  description  of  the  process  by  which  the 
mind  enters  into  this  mood  is  delicately  accurate.  First 
the  ordinary  burdens  of  life  are  removed,  and  the  mystery 
of  the  unintelligible  world  is  lightened.  That  is,  since 
there  is  no  absoluteness  but  only  relativity  of  knowledge 
of  our  ordinary  life,  that  knowledge  is  renounced  as  an 


84  WORDSWORTH. 

unintelligible  world  of  knowledge.  Categories  of  thought 
are  given  up,  all  distinctions  of  grades  and  degrees  are 
obliterated,  and  what  remains  is  a  sort  of  abstract 
mood  without  a  concrete  counterpart.  Next  the  human 
blood,  smelling  entirely  too  much  of  earthiness,  is  sus- 
pended in  its  action,  the  body  is  laid  asleep,  and  the  soul, 
having  transcended  physical  experience,  enters  into  the 
'"blessed  consciousness  of  unutterable  reality." 

The  result  of  this  intense  excitation  of  the  mind  is 
to  produce  two  qualities  of  mysticism,  namely,  the  noetic 
quality  and  the  quality  of  ineffability.  According  to  the 
first,  "we  see  into  the  life  of  things."  These  states  of 
mind  are  "states  of  insight  into  the  depths  of  truth  un- 
plumbed  by  the  discursive  intellect.  They  are  illumina- 
tions, revelations,  full  of  significance  and  importance."^^ 
According  to  the  second  quahty — inefifability — the  experi- 
ence in  this  state  of  mind  remains  inarticulate.  "The 
subject  immediately  says  that  no  adequate  report  of  its 

contents  can  be  given It  cannot  be  imparted  or 

transferred  to  others."  For  lack  of  a  sufficient  number 
of  points  of  connection  with  ordinary  life  and  of  adequate 
terms  of  expression  the  mystic  can  never  communicate  to 
others  the  wonderful  truths  which  he  beholds. 

To  put  the  description  of  the  process  in  other  words, 
the  necessary  conditions  for  producing  this  extraordinary 
state  of  mind  seem  to  be  the  the  mental  acts  of  forcing  the 
feelings  to  divest  themselves  of  their  ordinary  contents 
of  concrete  material  and  the  imagination  of  its  ordinary 
intellectual  content,  and  to  fix  themselves  upon  some  ab- 
stract point — which  point  in  some  mysterious  way  begins 
to  illuminate  under  the  focus  of  the  feelings  and  the  im- 


"  James,   "Varieties  of   Religious  Experience,"   in   chapter  on 
Mysticism. 


FRKEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  85 

agination.  Under  the  strained  conditions  into  wiiich  t!ie 
will  has  forced  the  feelings  and  the  imagination  a  new 
order  of  truth  is  generated  by  them,  great  gleams  of  light 
flash  out  in  a  thousand  directions  from  the  radiating 
centre,  vast  strata  of  wonderful  truth  are  revealed.  But 
when  the  illuminating  process  has  once  fairly  set  in,  the 
will,  which  has  been  the  chief  power  at  work  thus  far, 
is  temporarily  held  in  abeyance,  and  for  a  short  time  the 
subject  "sees  into  the  life  of  things." 

It  is  a  long  way  from  the  point  where  the  heart  rath- 
er indifferently  wastes  "its  kindliness  on  stocks  and  ston- 
es, and  on  the  vacant  air"  to  the  point  where  its  experi- 
ence is  so  intense  that  it  sees,  or  thinks  it  sees,  "into  the 
life  of  things."'  We  have  traced  out  a  number  of  more 
or  less  distinct  intermediary  stages.  We  have  seen  that 
the  very  highest  stage  is  for  the  most  part  a  moral  and 
intellectual  abstraction ;  yet  it  always  held  a  certain  charm 
for  W'ordsworth : 

Mighty  is  the  charm 

Of  those  abstractions  to  a  mind  beset 

With  images  and  haunted  by  herself, 

And   specially   delightful   unto   me 

Was  that  clear  synthesis  built  up  aloft 

So  gracefully.'" 

His  mind,  haunted  as  it  was  by  concrete  images,  delighted 
to  penetrate  through  the  images  and  build  up  a  clear  syn- 
thesis aloft  and  gracefully  out  of  the  inner  meanings  and 
abstractions  suggested  by  these  images.  Almost  con- 
stantly, however,  Wordsworth  remained  just  below  the 
very  highest  stage  of  the  mystical.  His  method  seems  to 
have  been  to  force  his  way  as  near  to  it  as  possible  with- 
out losing  the  vitailty  of  passion  and  of  concrete  repre- 


="Prelude,"  Bk.  VI. 


86  WORDSWORTH. 

sentation.  Here,  in  the  next  to  the  highest  stage  of  the 
mystical,  where  the  hght  of  sense  does  not  quite  go  out, 
where  ordinary  intelHgible  distinctions  remain,  Hes  the 
most  distinctive  and  the  most  soHd  part  of  his  work. 
Here  is  where  the  synthesis  of  memory  images,  sense  per- 
ceptions, and  the  moral  idea,  is  most  effectively  made.  It 
is  on  this  level  of  the  mystical  that  Wordsworth  must  be 
tested. 


II 


The  power  of  volition,  of  self-control,  which  is  true 
freedom,  and  the  power  of  deep  and  intuitive  feelings, 
feelings  of  love,  faith,  joy,  rapture — these  are  the  foun- 
dation stones  of  Wordsworth's  mysticism.  The  union 
of  these  powers  is  the  union  of  what  is  highest  in  man — 
self-control  and  freedom — and  of  what  is  best  in  child  life 
• — passionate  love,  faith,  joy  and  rapture.  V^olition  and 
self-control  save  the  feelings  from  sentimentality.  Thus 
Wordsworth  attained  to  a  high  dignity  of  life  and  at  the 
same  time  retained  the  simplicity  of  a  child.  Though  the 
union  of  these  powers  can  hardly  attain  to  the  name  of  a 
philosophic  system  of  thought,  yet  the  powers  themselves 
are  grounded  deep  in  the  common  heart  of  man.  They 
are  little  influenced  by  the  accidents  of  time  or  place,  or 
by  the  force  of  environment.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
after  a  century  (the  nineteenth  century)  of  prodigious 
efforts  to  lay  bare  the  heart  of  nature  and  to  discover  her 
laws,  of  a  vast  collocation  of  facts  concerning  her,  giving 
us  new  and  profound  insights  into  her  mysterious  work- 
ings, the  treatment  of  her  by  Wordsworth  is  still  fresh 
"with  points  of  morning  dew''  and  has  lost  scarcely  any  of 


FREEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  87 

its  meaning  and  vitality.  With  the  grasp  of  a  giant, 
Wordsworth  seized  upon  the  permanent  and  fundamental 
qualities  of  man.  tlie  qualities  of  volition  and  passion,  at 
a  point  where  man  is  not  an  object  apart  from  the  vast 
forces  that  surround  him  and  play  upon  his  life,  but  at 
a  point  where  he  is  essentially  in  harmony  with  the  forces 
that  are  constantly  "breathing  grandeur  upon  the  hum- 
blest face  of  human  life." 

Why,  then,  should  there  be  any  question  as  to  the 
meaning  and  validity  of  Wordsworth's  mystical  synthesis 
of  memory  images,  sense  perceptions,  and  the  moral  idea? 
The  question  of  doubt  is  not  usually  raised  with  regard 
to  the  foundation  upon  wdiich  it  rests, — although  that 
may  be  questioned,  too, — but  with  regard  to  the  particular 
synthesis  Wordsworth  built  on  that  foundation.  Is  the 
way  of  memory  and  the  senses  the  true  way  of  life? 
Does  moral  virtue  really  flow  from  the  heart  of  external 
nature  into  the  heart  of  man?  Is  not  this  synthesis  of 
memory,  sense,  and  the  moral  idea  a  factitious  synthesis, 
and  is  it  not  true  that  the  quicker  we  get  rid  of  the  illu- 
sion the  better?  Many  great  and  wise  men  have  been 
against  Wordsworth  on  this  score.  We  have  seen  in  our 
study  of  childhood  memories  and  the  "Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality" that  critics  were  temperamentally  divided  on 
the  question  of  the  validity  of  those  memories.  But  here 
the  temperamental  differences  are  more  highly  accentuat- 
ed. Here  are  represented  two  widely  different  ways  of 
approaching  some  of  the  most  important  problems  of 
life — the  common  sense  way  and  the  mystical  way.  The 
common  sense  way  holds  in  contempt  the  intuitions,  the 
dreams,  and  the  raptures  of  the  mystic.  The  mystic  way 
seems  to  subvert  into  strange  and  interfusing  presences 
the  facts  of  every  day  life  that  ought  to  be  taken  as  a 
matter  of  course.    And  perhaps  between  these  two  ways 


88  WORDSWORTH. 

of  thinking,  and  especialy  of  feeling,  no  reconciliation 
can  ever  be  made.  The  only  thing  that  can  be  done  is 
to  show,  with  as  much  sympathy  as  possible,  how  far 
reasonableness  will  be  on  the  side  of  Wordsworth's  way 
of  feeling  about  the  important  facts  of  life  involved  in  his 
synthesis. 

It  has  just  been  said  that  since  the  powers  of  volition 
and  passion,  which  are  made  the  ground  work  of  Words- 
worth's mysticism,  are  deeply  grounded  in  the  heart  of 
man,  they  are  not  much  influenced  by  the  accidents  of 
time  or  place,  or  by  the  force  of  environment.  But  not  so 
with  the  particular  synthesis  he  built  on  that  ground 
work.  That  was  due  mainly  to  the  accidents  of  his  times 
and  to  his  particular  environment.  Have  given  the  man, 
his  early  surroundings,  and  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  his  life,  and  the  result  must  be  this  particular  synthe- 
sis. Mysticism  manifests  itself  in  outward  expression  in 
many  forms.  Mysticism  is  intuitive,  deeply  subjective, 
close  to  the  very  inner  core  of  life,  to  the  very  "beatings 
of  the  human  heart."  But  it  craves  outward  expression ; 
and  just  because  it  is  so  deeply  from  within,  its  outward 
expression  differs  in  different  individuals.  Men  do  not 
differ  much  in  their  statement  of  an  outward  fact  of  life, 
say,  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  It  is  objective  and  ver- 
ifiable. But  in  the  expression  of  an  inner  experience  a 
man  must  recur  to  some  form  of  pictorial  or  symbolic 
language.  Pie  must  work  by  hints  and  suggestions;  and 
the  mystic  experience  on  its  way  to  outward  expression 
may  take  diverse  courses.  Cathedrals,  angels,  seraphs, 
symbolism  ready  made  from  the  Bible,  may  serve  as  a 
channel  of  expression  for  the  different  hierarchial  stages 
of  mystical  excellence,  as  in  Swedenborg.  Nature  may 
even  be  mystically  interpreted  in  terms  of  Biblical  sym- 
Ijols,  as  in  Newman.    In  speaking  of  the  angels,  Newman 


FREKDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  89 

says.  "Every  breath  of  air  and  ray  of  light  anrl  heat, 
every  beautiful  prospect,  is,  as  it  were,  the  skirts  of  their 
garments,  the  waving  of  the  robes  of  those  whose  faces 
see  God."^''  And  the  Catholic  Church,  with  its  hierarchy 
of  oflficers  and  its  ritualistic  forms  of  worship,  may  serve 
as  an  outward  embodiment  of  the  religious  and  mystical 
consciousness.  So  in  Wordsworth,  different  from  Swe- 
denborg  and  from  Newman  respectively,  the  objects  and 
powers  of  external  nature  furnished  the  embodiment  and 
means  of  expression  of  his  mystical  and  religious  con- 
sciousness. 

But  the  tone  in  which  we  have  just  been  speaking  of 
the  mystics  and  their  symbols  is  by  no  means  the  tone  in 
which  they  themselves  speak.  The  precise  difificulty  witli 
them  is  that  they  take  themselves  and  their  symlx)ls  with 
absolute  seriousness ;  and  this  is  what  alienates  the  crit- 
ics. Swedenborg's  religion  to  him  is  the  true  religion. 
Catholicism  to  Newman  is  the  only  right  religion.  And 
Wordsworth  feels  that  he  actually  draws  unbounded 
moral  and  religious  strength  from  the  heart  of  external 
nature.  The  synthesis  stands  in  his  mind  as  an  absolute 
fact,  and  admits  of  no  doubt.  It  is  not  the  result  of 
imagination  so  called,  but  of  bare  and  unaided  vision. 
Undoubtedly  any  and  all  of  these  mystics  make  too  great 
claims  for  their  particular  formulas  as  means  of  the  de- 
velopment of  character  and  life.  They  are  too  insistent 
in  making  their  particular  cures  the  panacea  for  all  ills. 
A  specific  formula  cannot  have  universal  validity.  The 
method  of  each  one,  and  of  Wordsworth  especially,  is 
a  little  too  exclusive.  Moral  strength  does  not  flow  so 
exclusively  from  external  nature.  Is  it  not  possible  that 
from  the  atmosphere  enveloping  religious  ceremonies — 

""Apologia." 


90  WORDSWORTH. 

great  cathedrals,  elaborate  rituals,  accumulations  of  his- 
toric associations — moral  strength  may  flow  into  the 
mind  as  effectively  as  from  external  nature?  And  is  it 
not  true  that  these  systems  need  not  be  mutually  exclu- 
sive? With  these  limitations  in  mind,  let  us  see  what 
may  be  said  in  favor  of  Wordsworth's  mystical  synthe- 
sis in  particular. 

First,  we  cannot  really  exclude  the  forces  of  nature 
from  us  if  we  will.  Whatever  transcendental  qualities 
man  may  possess,  he  has  evolved  out  of  the  very  heart 
of  nature,  and  is  completely  enveloped  by  her  through 
his  whole  life.  He  is  fortunate  if  he  can  live  where  he 
can  tread  the  solid  earth  and  can  see  the  sky  overhead. 
It  is  not  disputed  that  men,  for  their  moral  as  well  as  their 
physical  well  being,  should  live  in  wholesome  sunshine 
and  in  the  presence  of  blowing  breezes  a  good  part  of 
their  lives.  These  are  the  primal  necessities  of  life,  and 
just  as  Wordsworth  in  his  poetry  would  use  "a  selection 
of  language  really  used  by  men,"  so  in  the  appropriation 
of  primal  necessities  he  would  use  a  strictly  selective  pro- 
cess. He  would  not  be  blind  to  the  destructive  power  of 
"the  lightning,  the  fierce  wind,  and  trampling  waves," 
but  he  would  select  the  best  portion  of  natural  influences. 
He  would  not  all  his  life  breathe  the  murky  atmosphere 
of  a  great  city,  but  would  choose  to  let  the  "motions  of 
delight  that  haunt  the  sides  of  the  green  hills"  touch 
his  life.  He  would  allow  the  brooks,  muttering  "a  busy 
noise  by  day,  a  quiet  sound  in  the  silent  night,"  the  waves 
and  the  groves,  to  play  upon  his  life  and  mould  his  charac- 
ter. All  this  we  must  let  Wordsworth  himself  tell  in  his 
own  incomparable  "selection  of  language  really  used  by 
men" : 

Ye  motions  of  delight,  that  haunt  the  sides 
Of  the  green  hills :  ye  breezes  and  soft  airs. 


FREEDOM    AND    MYSTICISM.  9I 

Whose  subtle  intercourse  with  hrcatliing  llowers, 

Feelingly  watched,  might  teach  Man's  haughty  race 

How  without  injury  to  take,  to  give 

Without  oflfence;  ye  who,  as  if  to  show 

The  wondrous  influence  of  power  gently  used. 

Bend  the  complying  heads  of  lordly  pines, 

And,  with  a  touch,  shift  the  stupendous  clouds 

Through  the  whole  compass  of  the  sky;  ye  brooks, 

Muttering  along  the  stones,  a  busy  noise 

By  day,  a  quiet  sound  in  silent  night; 

Ye  waves,  that  out  of  the  great  deep  steal  forth 

In  a  calm  hour  to  kiss  the  pebbly  shore, 

Not  mute,  and  then  retire,  fearing  no  storm; 

And  you,  ye  groves,  whose  ministry  it  is 

To  interpose  the  covert  of  your  shades, 

Even  as  a  sleep,  between  the  heart  of  man 

And  outward  troubles,  between  man  himself, 

Not  seldom,  and  his  own  uneasy  heart: 

Oh  !  that  I  had  a  music  and  a  voice 

Harmonious  as  your  own,  that  I  might  tell 

What  ye  have  done  for  me." 

This  indeed  sounds  beautifully  mystical,  but  it  may  be- 
come a  practical  reality  to  any  man.  At  least,  no  man  is 
capable  to  judge  what  nature  can  or  can  not  do  for  him 
until  he  has  given  her,  at  her  best,  a  fair  and  reasonable 
chance. 

Secondly,  it  lies  within  the  power  of  a  man's  will  to 
make  Wordsworth's  mystical  synthesis  his  own.  Al- 
though his  method  may  not  be  exclusive  of  all  others 
it  will  work  if  one  but  gives  it  a  chance.  If  one  put  him- 
self in  the  way  of  it,  it  will  produce  character  of  a  high 
order.  To  start  with,  Wordsworth  demands  manliness, 
that  is,  humility  and  courage,  of  every  individual.  Then 
one  must  use  his  zi'ill — this  is  W^ordsworth's  peculiar  les- 
son.   One  must  will  witii  mental  alertness,  not  with  men- 


^"Prelude,"  Bk.  XH. 


92  WORDSWORTH. 

tal  laziness,  to  give  himself  up,  not  passively,  but  "in  a 
ivise  passiveness"  to  the  powers  that  are  forever  speak- 
ing. For  the  majority  of  human  beings  it  is  a  very  hard 
task  to  be  wisely  passive  in  the  presence  of  great  and  en- 
during objects.  It  is  vastly  easier  to  engage  in  a  constant 
round  of  aimless,  nervous  and  scattered  activities,  which 
really  is  mere  passiveness.  There  is,  therefore,  a  wide 
difference  between  mere  passivity  and  wise  passiveness. 
And  when  that  difference  is  taken  fully  into  account,  the 
combination  of  a  moral  idea  and  the  life  of  the  senses  is 
not  as  factitious  as  it  may  seem. 

In  the  third  place,  there  is  nothing  degrading  in  the 
life  of  the  senses  themselves  when  under  proper  restraint. 
It  is  only  when  they  are  made  an  end  in  themselves  that 
they  are  not  elevating.  It  is  not  only  the  will  that  puts 
a  restraint  on  the  life  of  the  senses,  according  to  Words- 
worth, but  memory  also  has  an  important  purifying  pow- 
er. The  tone  of  much  criticism  on  Wordsworth's  inter- 
pretation of  nature  is  as  though  he  held  that  power  of 
hig^h  morals  comes  only  and  immediately  from  and 
through  the  senses.  This  is  essentially  unfair  to  Words- 
v^'orth's  interpretation.  For  the  power  of  memory,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  plays  an  important  part  in  Words- 
worth's scheme  of  things.  It  is  not  only  what  the  eye  and 
ear  perceive  but  what  they  half-create  that  gives  value  to 
an  experience  with  nature.  And  the  half -creating  power  of 
the  mind  lies  in  previous  experiences  conserved  and  car- 
ried forward  by  means  of  memory  and  volition,  and 
present  in  every  act  of  the  mind.  "What  want  we?"  he 
asks  in  the  "Recluse" : 

Have  we  not  perpetual  streams, 
Warm  woods,  and  sunny  hills,  and  fresh  green  fields, 
And  mountains  not  less  green,  and  flocks  and  herds, 
And  thickets  full  of  songsters,  and  the  voice 


FREEDOM   AND    MYSTICISM.  93 

Of  lordh'  birds,  an  unexpected  sound 

Heard  now  and  then  from  morn  to  latest  eve, 

Admonishing  the  man  who  walks  below 

Of  solitude  and  silence  in  the  sky? 

These  have  we,  and  a  thousand  nooks  of  earth 

Have  also  these,  but  nowhere  else  is  found, 

Nowhere  (or  is  it  fancy?)  can  be  found 

The  one  sensation  that  is  here ;  'tis  here, 

Here  as  it  found  its  way  into  my  heart 

In  childhood,  here  as  it  abides  by  day. 

By  night,  here  only;  or  in  chosen  minds 

That  take  it  with  them  hence,  where'er  they  go, 

— 'Tis,  but  I  cannot  name  it,  'tis  the  sense 

Of  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  repose, 

A  blended  holiness  of  earth  and  sky. 

Something  that  makes  this  individual  spot, 

This   small   abiding-place   of  many  men. 

A  termination,  and  a  last  retreat. 

A  center,  come  from  wheresoe'er  you  will, 

A  whole  without  dependence  or  defect, 

IMade  for  itself,  and  happy  in  itself. 

Perfect  contentment,  Unity  entire. 

The  "one  sensation"  that  found  its  way  into  Words- 
worth's heart  in  childhood  and  that  resides  in  chosen 
minds  that  take  it  with  them  wherever  they  go,  possesses 
a  power  to  purify  and  hallow  the  present  life  of  the  sens- 
es. And  when  "the  sense  of  majesty,  and  heauty,  and 
repose,  a  blended  holiness  of  earth  and  sky"  join  with 
the  power  of  memory,  not  only  to  purify  and  hallow,  but 
to  restrain  and  control  the  life  of  the  senses — do  we  not 
have  here  a  synthesis,  mystical  though  it  be,  that  com- 
mends itself  to  our  sense  of  reason? 

The  final  test,  however,  of  Wordsworth's  mysticism 
is  the  test  of  the  foundation  upon  whicii  its  synthesis 
rests.  It  is  "the  mind  of  man,"  Wordsworth  says,  tliat  is 
"my  haunt,  the  main  region  of  my  song."  The  mystical 
experience,  after  all,  is  mainly  a  subjective  experience, 


94  WORDSWORTH. 

whatever  outward  expressions  and  connections  it  may 
have.  Wordsworth,  says  Emerson,  "alone  in  his  time, 
treated  the  human  mind  well,  and  with  an  absolute  trust." 
And  it  was  a  trust  in  the  mind's  power  of  self-direction 
and  self-support, — its  power  of  will.  We  have  already 
seen  that  in  the  production  of  poetry  the  will  has  two 
functions  to  fulfill — to  reproduce  by  a  species  of  reactions 
a  former  emotion  and  to  hold  under  restraint  the  new 
emotion.  In  the  process  of  life  the  will  has  still  greater 
functions  to  fulfill.  First  of  all  by  the  doctrine  of  rec- 
ollection, it  is  to  conserve  and  transmute  all  that  is  val- 
uable of  former  experiences.  Secondly,  it  is  to  hold  the 
eyes  and  ears,  heart  and  mind,  close  to  the  bosom  of 
mother  earth: 

Long  have  I  loved  what  I  behold, 

The  night  that  calms,  the  day  that  cheers; 

The  common  growth  of  mother  earth 

Suffices  me — her  tears,  her  mirth, 

Her  humblest  mirth  and  tears.^° 

And  thirdly,  the  heart  must  "watch  and  receive."  Man 
is  to  "live  within  the  light  of  high  endeavors,"  and  when 
he  does  so,  he  "daily  spreads  abroad  his  being  armed 
with  strength  that  can  not  fail." 

But  when  the  will  does  its  work  intensely  and  pas- 
sionately, then,  by  the  stress  of  feeling,  the  experience  is 
carried  along  through  the  different  mystic  stages,  and  it 
becomes  more  and  more  subjective  and  intuitive,  more 
and  more  inexplicable.  And,  like  chemicals  that  will  act 
and  form  new  combinations  after  a  certain  intensity  of 
heat  has  been  reached,  so  the  will  and  the  passions,  coun- 
teracting and  re-enforcing  each  other,  both  strongly  and 
highly  wrought,  beat  out  new  combinations  of  high  char- 


'""Peter  Bell." 


FREEDOM    AND    MVSTICISM.  95 

acter.  This  is  the  ground  work  of  Wordsworth's  mysti- 
cal synthesis,  and  it  is  soHd  ground  work — as  solid  and 
enduring  as  the  heart  of  man  itself.  Born  of  a  time  of 
revolution  which  stirred  the  vital  energies  and  deepest 
personal  convictions  of  men,  it  yet  bears  the  stamp  of  an 
original  and  masterful  nund.  It  is  a  truth  arrived  at  not 
by  the  calculating  and  analytical  methods  of  a  philoso- 
pher, but  by  the  demands  of  an  intuitive  and  sensitive 
nature  charged  with  volitional  and  moral  earnestness. 
It  is  no  doubt  wrong  to  call  this  a  system  of  philosophy — 
it  is  rather  a  method  of  practice  in  the  fundamental  terms 
of  human  life.  It  is  when  Wordsworth  is  dealing  with 
this  original  stuff  of  human  nature  that  he  rises  above 
tlie  accidental  inlluences  of  his  times  and  identifies  him- 
self powerfully  with  those  forces  in  men  that  are  per- 
manent and  enduring, 

Their  passions  and  their  feelings,  chiefly  those 
Essential  and  eternal  in  the  heart.^° 

It  is  here  that  he  penetrates  deepest  into  the  heart  of 
man  and  farthest  into  the  mysteries  of  eternal  being, 
and  produces  in  the  mind  the  most  intimate  sense  of 
moral  and  spiritual  freedom.  It  is  here  too  that  his  ut- 
terances, in  the  words  of  Lowell,  "have  the  bare  sinceri- 
ty, the  absolute  abstraction  from  time  and  place,  the  im- 
munity from  decay,  that  belong  to  the  grand  simplicities 
of  the  Bible."" 


""Excursion,"  Bk.  I. 
"  Essay,  "Wordsworth." 


CHAPTER  IV 

WORDSWORTH:  ART  AND  FREEDOM. 

Wordsworth  always  and  primarily  had  before  him 
the  purpose  of  writing  poetry  about  man,  nature,  and 
childhood,  however  completely  that  purpose  may  have 
been  obscured  at  times  by  social,  political,  or  metaphys- 
ical interests.  The  poetry,  to  be  sure,  was  to  be  philo- 
sophical poetry.  It  was  to  deal  with  new  and  original 
kinds  of  matter.  It  was  to  reform  the  tastes  of  readers 
and  was  to  create  a  special  taste  for  itself.  It  was  to  be 
an  enduring  kind  of  poetry  and  was  to  teach  mankind 
enduring  lessons.  And,  with  these  distracting  interests, 
the  only  reason  it  proved  to  be  genuine  poetry  is  that 
Wordsworth  was  at  bottom  a  genuine  artist.  We  have 
seen  that  he,  for  the  most  part,  renounced  the  purely 
mystical,  that  he  dispensed  with  the  pleasure  of  build- 
ing charming  abstractions  through  the  concrete  images  of 
the  outer  world,  and  with  seeing  "into  the  life  of  things." 
We  shall  now  see  that  he  renounced  the  pleasure  of  the 
pure  mystic  because  of  artistic  purposes,  because  his 
deepest  impulse  of  life  was  the  artistic  impulse.  "Faith," 
says  E.  Recejac,  "identifies  mind  with  its  object  in  a  way 
that  artistic  reflection  can  never  do.  When  we.  reflect 
we  find  that  we  get  the  feeling  of  love,  joy,  being,  from 
within,  and  then  we  picture  them  as  belonging  to  all  sorts 
of  things :  but  in  the  mystic  state,  the  consciousness  and 


ART    AND    FKEKDOM.  97 

the  world  meet  directly  in  a  world  that  transcends  them 
both — in  God  who  at  once  contains  them  and  carries  the 
sense  of  their  affinities  to  the  highest  point.  It  is  this 
meeting  of  the  inner  life  of  the  spirit  and  the  outer  life 
which  leaves  behind  every  aesthetic  effect."^  In  the 
purely  mystic  consciousness,  then,  the  inner  and  outer 
life  meet  in  such  close  affinity  that  the  artist,  who  must 
work  in  concrete  imagery,  pictures,  colors,  etc.,  in  order  to 
be  effective,  cannot  find  expression  for  the  purely  mysti- 
cal experience.  The  pure  mystic  may  indeed  be  able  to 
"see  into  the  life  of  things,"  as  he  says,  but  it  does  not 
help  the  artist,  for  he  has  no  way  of  representing  what 
he  sees,  and,  as  has  just  been  said,  representation  is  es- 
sential to  the  artist. 

Wordsworth,  then,  gave  up  for  tlic  most  part  the 
mighty  charm  of  abstraction  because  he  chose  to  be  a 
poet  primarily  and  not  a  mystic.  But  for  this  very  same 
reason,  namely,  that  he  chose  to  be  a  poet,  \\'ordsworth 
carried  the  mystic  experience,  by  the  intensity  of  will 
and  passion,  to  as  near  the  vanishing  point  of  the  senses 
as  possible.  Volition  and  high  passion  are  not  only  the 
means  by  which  character  is  beaten  into  shape,  but  they 
are  essential  to  the  production  of  great  and  enduring  po- 
etry. And  in  the  last  analysis  it  will  be  seen  that,  for 
Wordsworth,  the  chief  function  of  childhood  memories, 
sense  perceptions,  and  the  moral  idea  taken  together,  is 
to  furnish  material  for  purely  artistic  purposes. 

Poetry  may  deal  with  common  things  and  the  com- 
mon affairs  of  life,  but  it  must  deal  with  them  more  in- 
tensely than  their  commonness  would  suggest.  Shakes- 
peare, to  use  a  familiar  example,  could  deal  with  the 
common  affairs  of  English  life,  but  his  great  characters 


*  "The  Bases  of  the  Mvstic  Consciousness." 


98  WORDSWORTH, 

are  filled  with  the  mystery  of  power  and  with  the  inten- 
sity of  high  passion.  Macbeth  feels  his  heart  knocking 
at  his  ribs  and  clutches  at  air-drawn  daggers  in  his  de- 
lirium. Othello  is  wrought  upon  by  green-eyed  jealousy 
until  he  is  thrown  into  a  trance.  Hamlet  is  familiar  with 
states  of  rapturous  ecstacy.  Lear,  driven  into  the  storm 
by  the  heinous  wickedness  of  his  daughters,  is  stirred  to 
mountain  peaks  of  passion.  We  do  not  call  these  ex- 
periences mystical  because  so  many  other  elements — 
elements  of  mind  derangement,  which  is  permissible  in 
drama,  elements  of  acting  and  dramatic  efifects,  etc., — en- 
ter into  them.  But  they  have  essentially  the  same  source 
with  the  mystical  experiences.  Wordsworth  believed  the 
truth  could  be  found  in  the  commonest  things  right  be- 
fore one's  eyes.  But  the  penetration,  the  vision  necessary 
to  discover  the  truth  there  really  created  new  values  for 
them.  Wordsworth  wrote  poems  about  common  objects, 
but  the  poems  do  not  especially  have  the  element  of  com- 
monness in  them.  His  poems  about  children  are  not  for 
children;  they  are  for  m.ature  minds.  His  poems  about 
peasants  are  not  to  be  fully  appreciated  by  peasants.  The 
intensity  of  treatment  removes  the  poems  a  great  dis- 
tance from  the  objects  treated. 

Again  this  intensity  of  treatment  gave  little  chance 
for  ornamental  display.  It  made  the  language  of  his  po- 
etry as  simple  as  that  of  common  people.  Wordsv^^orth 
found  vv^hen  the  holy  passion  was  stirring  that  simple 
language  would  best  express  his  feelings,  just  as  Lady 
Macbeth,  in  the  night  walk  scene,  when  she  was  charged 
with  the  greatest  possible  intensity,  found  (that  is,  the 
poet  found  for  her,)  simple  language  best  suited  to  her 
purpose.  To  produce  the  greatest  poetry,  then,  with 
common  subjects,  the  poet  must  use  power  and  intensity, 
and  must  express  himself  in  the  simplest  language. 


ART    AND    FRIiEDOM.  99 

Tlic  chief  question  with  Wordsworth,  however,  was 
how  to  carry  this  mystic  and  poetic  intensity  to  the  higli- 
est  point  without  losing  control  of  it  and  without  losing 
the  vitality  of  concrete  representation.  One  aid  to  this 
end  was  the  use  he  made  of  the  material  furnished  by 
the  memories  of  his  childhood.  These  memories  satisfy 
the  requirements  of  realistic  depiction,  for  they  have 
their  basis  in  concrete  experience,  in  the  personal  expe- 
rience of  the  poet  himself.  But  they  are  not  wholly  dom- 
inated by  the  concrete.  They  are  easily  detached  from 
time  and  place  and  lend  themselves  to  romantic  strange- 
ness and  to  spiritual  and  mystic  interpretation.  Words- 
worth's sincerity  and  realism  prevented  him  from  going 
outside  of  his  personal  experience  for  his  poetic  material, 
from  entering  a  region  as  remote  from  the  personal  as 
that,  say,  of  the  "Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner."  But 
his  desire  for  strangeness  and  wonder  led  him,  so  to 
speak,  to  the  rim  of  his  personal  experience.  The  remote 
ends  of  the  real  and  the  mysterious  met  together  in  the 
memories  of  his  childhood,  which  could  readily  be  sub- 
limated into  a  spiritual  experience.  Wordsworth,  it  may 
be  said  in  passing,  was  in  almost  every  respect  the  oppo- 
site of  Scott.  But  in  one  respect  they  were  alike,  which 
likeness  at  the  same  time  involves  a  contrast.  They 
both  lived  much  in  the  past.  Scott's  past  was  historic 
feudalism;  Wordsworth's  past  was  his  own  childhood. 
Scott  saw  the  beautiful  and  ideal  side  of  feudalism ; 
Wordsworth  saw  the  beautiful  and  ideal  side  of  child- 
hood. Each  conceived  his  past  in  some  sort  of  reality. 
Scott  built  a  castle  on  the  principle  of  feudalism ;  Words- 
worth built  a  castle,  too,  with  his  inheritance  of  the  past 
— a  castle  not  made  with  hands. 

But  the  perfect  fusion  of  realism,  spiritualization,  and 
mystery  into  an  artistic  unity  of  intense  power  is  a  feat 


lOO  WORDSWORTH. 

beyond  the  strength  of  ordinary  mortals.  It  requires  a 
strict  fidelity  to  the  outward  facts  of  life,  a  subtle  and 
penetrating  insight  into  their  inward  and  intuitional  mean- 
ing, and  a  voluntary  intensity  of  mind  which  can  be  sus- 
tained alone  by  deep  and  genuine  feelings.  Although  ex- 
haustive treatment  in  the  way  of  illustration  can  not  be 
entered  upon  here,  yet  one  illustration,  which  is  at  once 
the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  perfect,  must  be  given. 
It  is  the  poem  "To  the  Cuckoo,"  a  poem  which  Words- 
worth himself  placed  first  in  merit  among  his  shorter 
productions.  The  idea  of  mystery  which  pervades  and 
miderlies  the  whole  poem  is  slightly  suggested  in  the  first 
stanza : 

0  blithe  New-comer !  I  have  heard, 

1  hear  thee  and  rejoice. 

O   Cuckoo!   shall  I  call  thee  Bird, 
Or  but  a  wandering  Voice? 

In  the  next  stanza  the  mystery  is  more  pronounced,  and 
the  situation  and  the  immediate  sense  perceptions  of  the 
poem  are  given,  but  at  the  close  of  these  stanzas  there 
is  again  a  suggestion  of  mystery  slightly  stronger  than 
the  first: 

While  I  am  lying  on  the  grass 
Thy  twofold  shout  I  hear, 
From  hill  to  hill  it  seems  to  pass, 
At  once  far  off,  and  near. 

Though  babbling  only  to  the  Vale, 
Of  sunshine  and  of  flowers. 
Thou  bringest  unto  me  a  tale 
Of  visionary  hours. 

In  the  next  stanza  the  mystery  is  more  pronounced,  and 
the  "even  yet"  suggests  that  this  impression  of  mystery 
had  been  experienced  before : 


ART    AND    FREEDO^i.  tOi 

Thrice  welcome,  darling  of  the  Spring! 

Even  yet  thou  art  to  me 

No  bird,  but  an  invisible  thing, 

A  voice,  a  mystery. 

And  then  suddenly  the  whole  scene,  as  by  magic,  is 
thrown  back  to  "those  recollected  hours  that  have  the 
charm  of  visionary  things,"  and  romantic  strangeness  is 
added  to  mystery : 

The  same  whom  in  my  school-boy  days 
I  listened  to;  that  Cry 
Which  made  me  look  a  thousand  ways, 
In  bush,  and  tree,  and  sky. 

To  seek  thee  did  I  often  rove 

Through  woods  and  on  the  green; 

And  thou  were  still  a  hope,  a  love ;  ' 

Still  longed   for,   never  seen. 

And  now  the  scene  is  suddenly  brought  back  to  the  im- 
mediate present,  producing  that  subjective  transforma- 
tion w^hich  the  spell  of  childhood  memories  always 
wrought  upon  Wordsworth : 

And  I  can  listen  to  thee  yet; 
Can  lie  upon  the  plain 
And  listen,  till  I  do  beget 
That  golden  time  again. 

And  this  potent  charm  of  inward  delight  makes  the  or- 
dinary outward  world  of  reality  fade  into  "an  unsub- 
stantial faery  place:" 

O  blessed  Bird!  the  earth  we  pace 
Again  appears  to  be 
An   unsubstantial,    faery  place; 
That  is  fit  home  for  Thee. 


I02   V  WORDSWORTH. 

This  is  perhaps  the  finest  example  of  the  perfect  harmony 
of  sense-perceptions,  childhood  memories,  spiritualiza- 
tion,  and  mystery  that  can  be  found  in  the  language.  And 
it  is  chiefly  the  potencies  of  childhood  memories  and  vo- 
litional penetration  that  deepen  and  vitalize  the  meaning 
of  the  ordinary  cry  of  an  ordinary  bird,  and  create  in  the 
soul  an  inward  Hght  and  joy  and  freedom  of  such  intense 
reality  that  the  outward  world  seems  to  float  in  a  fsery- 
like  and  unsubstantial  substance. 

Another  essential  aid  in  carrying  the  mystic  intensity 
to  a  high  point  without  going  beyond  the  power  of 
poetic  representation,  is  to  deal  v/ith  primary  and  fun- 
damental passions  of  human  nature.  The  simple  and 
most  permanent  passions  of  the  heart  are  capable  of  being 
stretched  farthest  before  breaking.  Like  the  physical 
heart,  they  are  so  deeply  inwrought  intO'  the  very  struct- 
ure of  our  being  that  they  continue  beating  faithfully  as 
long  as  life  lasts: 

There  is  a  comfort  in  the  strength  of  love; 
'Twill  make  a  thing  endurable,  which  else 
Would  overset  the  brain,  or  break  the  heart.^ 

In  the  "Affliction  of  Margaret,"  the  subdued  self-control 
of  the  character  is  matched  only  by  the  intensity  of  her 
feelings.  The  surface  is  calm,  but  there  are  stirrings  to 
depths  unfathomable: 

I  look  for  ghosts ;  but  none  will  force 
Their  way  to  me :  'tis  falsely  said 
That  there  was  ever  intercourse 
Between  the  living  and  the  dead ; 
For,  surely,  then  I  should  have  sight 
Of  him  I  wait  for  day  and  night, 
With  love  and  longings  infinite. 

'"^lichael." 


ART    AND    FREEDOM.  I03 

My  apprehensions  come  in  crowds; 
I  dread  the  rustling  of  the  grass; 
The  very  shadows  of  the  clouds 
Have  power  to  shake  me  as  they  pass : 
I  question  things  and  do  not  find 
One  that  will  answer  to  my  mind ; 
And  all  the  world  appears  unkind. 

Shakespeare's  art  was  to  create  a  storm  of  passions  and 
then  ride  successfully  on  the  waves.  Wordsworth's  art 
was  to  create  deep  undercurrent  stirrings  of  the  waters, 
but  to  retain  a  perfect  calm  on  the  surface. 

Another  essential  aid  in  carrying  the  mystic  intensity 
and  rapture  to  a  high  point  without  passing  into  abstrac- 
tion, was  the  investiture  of  the  material  universe  with 
spirituality  and  movement.  Everything  for  him,  Words- 
worth says  in  the  "Prelude."  "respired  with  inward  mean- 
ing." Everything  was  transfused  with  a  living  spirit. 
All  the  objects  of  nature,  great  and  small,  remote  and 
near — rocks  and  flowers  and  birds  and  trees,  the  very 
air  we  breathe,  the  very  earth  upon  w^hich  we  tread,  the 
pageantry  of  earth  and  sky,  "the  broad  ocean  and  the 
azure  heavens  spangled  with  kindred  multitudes  of  stars" 
— all  are,  before  our  very  eyes,  transfused  by  the  "bless- 
ed power  that  rolls  about,  below,  above."  We  are  made 
to  feel  that  we  ourselves  are  "rolled  round  in  earth's  diur- 
nal course,  with  rocks,  and  stones,  and  trees."  Charged 
with  mystical  intensity,  but  void  of  mystical  excess, 
Wordsworth  intensifies,  with  naturalness  and  spontaneity, 
the  world  round  about  us  until  it  becomes  a  new  world 
for  us.  He  makes  it  a  transfusing  and  animating  pres- 
ence that  mingles  with  our  works  and  pours  its  living 
spirit  about  us.  This  conception  gives  suppleness  and 
mobility  to  the  imagination  and  keeps  it  whole.    And  the 


•104  WORDSWORTH. 

mystic  intensity  of  it  is  thereby  carried  to  a  high  point 
without  losing  the  vitahty  of  concreteness. 

His  method  as  the  result  of  his  artistic  aim  was  pro- 
ductive of  many  artistic  effects  that  are  characteristically 
Wordsworthian.  It  led  him,  for  example,  to  renounce 
the  conventional  language  of  the  poets,  to  brand  all  ex- 
trinsic ornament  as  unnecessary  and  insincere,  and  to  de- 
pend absolutely  upon  the  concreteness  of  the  thing  he 
was  talking  about  for  poetic  representation.  He  consid- 
ered that  every  object,  however  minute,  was  itself  suf- 
ficient for  the  stimulation  of  the  senses.  But  h^'-  his  in- 
tense penetration  upon  minute  objects  of  life  and  nature 
he  steeped  those  objects  in  a  splendor  not  really  their 
own  and  produced  an  original  kind  of  idealization  in  his 
poetry.  For  extrinsic  ornamentation  commonly  used  by 
other  poets  he  substituted  visions  of  universal  nature  and 
the  power  of  his  own  spirit.  In  a  sonnet,  for  example,  in 
"which  he  addresses  a  brook  he  has  these  words : 

I  would  not  do 
Like  Grecian  Artists,  give  thee  human  cheeks, 
Channels  for  tears ;  no  Naiad  should'st  thou  be — ■ 
(Have  neither  limbs,  feet,  feathers,  joints  nor  hairs: 
It  seems  the  Eternal  Soul  is  clothed  in  thee 
With  purer  robes  than  those  of  flesh  and  blood, 
And  hath  bestowed  on  thee  a  safer  good ; 
Unwearied  joj%  and  life  without  its  cares. 

In  like  manner  the  sweet  and  simple  "Highland  Girl"  is 
■identified  with  the  spirit  of  her  surroundings : 

Nor  am  I  loth,  though  pleased  at  heart, 

Sweet  Highland  Girl!  from  thee  to  part; 

For  I,  methinks,  till  I  grow  old, 

As  fair  before  me  shall  behold. 

As  I  do  now,  the  cabin  small, 

The  lake,  the  bay,  the  waterfall ; 

And  Thee,  the  Spirit  of  them  all ! 


ART    AND    FREEDOM.  105„ 

In  one  of  the  *'Lucy"  poems  he  makes  the  Spirit  of  Na- . 
ture  say  of  Lucy : 

"Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  impulse :  and  with  me 

The  Girl,  in  rock  and  plain, 
In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower, 
Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 

"She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  fawn 
That  wild  with  glee  across  the  lawn 

Or  up  the  mountain  springs; 
And  her's  shall  be  the  the  breathing  balm. 
And  her's  the  silence  and  the  calm 
Of  mute  insensate  things. 

"The  floating  clouds  their  state  shall  lend 
To  her;  for  her  the  willows  bend; 

Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 
Even  in  the  motions  of  the  storm 
Grace  that  shall  mould  the  Maiden's  form 

By   silent   sympathy. 

"The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 

Shall  pass  into  her  face." 

The  bfook,  the  tree,  the  child — small  and  common  objects, 
indeed — are  thus  seen  simply  but  also  intensely  by  the 
poet.  And  as  a  result  of  that  simple  and  intense  penetra- 
tion the  poet  reflects  in  these  objects  visions  of  universal 
nature  and  the  power  of  his  own  spirit.  To  particularize 
from  the  last  of  the  illustrations  just  given,  the  child  seen 
thus  simply  and  intensely,  suggests,  not  by  way  of  com- 
parison, but  by  means  of  the  poet's  direct  seeing,  pictorial 


Io6  WORDSWORTH. 

visions  of  floating  clouds,  bending  willows,  moving 
storms,  midnight  stars,  and  dancing  rivulets,  that  subtly 
mould  her  life  into  shape;  and  the  whole  poem  similarly 
suggests  that  the  divine  spirit  of  the  poet  himself  inter- 
penetrates that  subtle  power  of  nature  which  serves  as 
law  and  impulse  to  kindle  or  restrain  the  child  and  which 
lends  balm  and  grace  and  beauty  to  her  spirit.  This  ar- 
tistic method  and  aim,  together  with  his  use  of  childhood 
memories,  with  his  firm  grasp  upon  fundamental  pas- 
sions of  hardy  human  characters,  and  with  his  attributing 
movement  and  moral  power  to  the  sense  world  in  which 
we  live,  makes  Wordsworth  successful  not  only  in  carry- 
ing mystic  intensity  to  its  utmost  in  poetry  but  in  giving 
us  in  his  own  poetry  solid  substance  and  actuality  on  the 
one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  intense  and  highly  wrought 
idealizations. 

That  Wordsv/orth  always  aims  to  produce  idealiza- 
tions he  seems  to  deny  in  his  "Elegiac  Stanzas"  on  the 
death  of  his  brother  John.  This  denial,  however,  is  made 
on  the  grounds  of  mysticism  rather  than  on  the  grounds 
of  poetry.  It  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  Wordsworth's  mystic 
earnestness  in  taking  the  world  he  has  half-created  as 
the  world  of  absolute  reality.  We  have  seen,  however, 
that  the  light  of  the  pure  mystic's  faith  is  too  intense 
for  the  attainment  of  artistic  and  poetic  efifects,  and  it  is 
best  to  be  somewhat  skeptical,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
poet's  art,  after  a  certain  point  of  intensity  has  been 
reached.  Let  us  first  get  the  poem  itself  before  our 
minds.  The  poem  was  suggested  by  a  picture  of  Peele 
Castle  in  a  storm.    The  poet  begins: 

I  was  thy  neighbor  once,  thou  rugged  Pile ! 
Four  summer  weeks  I  dwelt  in  sight  of  thee : 
I  saw  thee  ever}^  daj^  and  all  the  while 
Thy  Form  was  sleeping  on  a  glassy  sea. 


ART    AND    FREEDOM.  IO7 

After  telling  in  the  next  two  stanzas  *'ho\v  perfect  was 
the  calm,"  he  continues: 

Ah!  then,  if  mine  had  been  the  Painter's  hand 
To  express  what  then  I  saw ;  and  add  the  gleam, 
The  light  that  never  was,  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration,  and  the  Poet's  dream ; 

I  would  have  planted  thee,  thou  hoary  Pile, 
Amid  a  world  how  diflfcrent  from  this ! 
Beside  a  sea  that  could  not  cease  to  smile; 
On  tranquil  land,  beneath  a  sky  of  bliss. 

The  gleam  of  light  that  was  to  be  added,  it  may  be  ex- 
plained, was  to  be  "borrowed  from  the  youthful  poet's 
dream."  After  telling  how,  in  the  fond  illusion  of  his 
heart,  he  would  have  painted  t'ne  picture,  he  says: 

So  once  it  would  have  been, — 'tis  so  no  more; 
I  have  submitted  to  a  new  control; 
A  power  is  gone,  which  nothing  can  restore ; 
A  deep  distress  hath  humanized  my  Soul. 

And  in  tlie  conclusion: 

Farewell,  farewell,  the  heart  that  lives  alone. 
Housed  in  a  dream,  at  distance  from  the  Kind ! 
Such  happiness,  wherever  it  be  known. 
Is  to  be  pitied;  for  'tis  surely  blind. 

But  welcome  fortitude,  and  patient  cheer. 
And  frequent  sights  of  what  is  to  be  borne! 
Such  sights,  or  worse,  as  are  before  me  here, — 
Not  without  hope  we  suffer  and  we  mourn. 

The  point  in  the  poem  to  seize  is  that  henceforth  to  at- 
tain to  happiness  the  poet  means  to  present  reality  only, 
to  welcome  "frequent  sights  of  what  is  to  be  borne." 
Since  he  has  submitted  to  a  new  control,  he  means  to 
paint  pictures  not  as  they  might  be,  but  as  they  are  in 


I08  WORDSWORTH. 

reality.  He  means  to  dispense  with  the  poet's  dream, 
and  thereby,  it  is  impHed,  with  the  power  of  idealization. 
And  this  conception  is  in  harmony  with  his  definition 
of  imagination  in  the  Fourteenth  Book  of  the  "Prelude," 
which  was  written  about  the  same  time  as  the  "Elegiac 
Stanzas."   There  he  explains  that  imagination,  in  truth. 

Is  but  another  name  for  absolute  power 
And  clearest  insight,  amplitude  of  mind, 
And  Reason  in  her  most  exalted  mood. 

And  what  he  means  by  "Reason  in  her  most  exalted 
mood,"  it  must  be  remembered,  is  passion.  This  he  ex- 
plains in  the  Fifth  Book  of  the  "Prelude,"  where  he  speaks 
of 

Adamantine  holds  of  truth 
By  reason  built,  or  passion,  which  itself 
Is  highest  reason  in  a  soul  sublime. 

We  have,  then,  in  volition  which  is  "absolute  power,"  in 
passion  which  "itself  is  highest  reason,"  and  in  insight 
which  is  sensitive  and  sympathetic  vision — in  these  we 
have  the  ingredients  of  the  imagination.  And  this,  it 
may  be  added,  is,  for  all  practical  purposes,  an  accurate 
description  of  the  conscious  elements  of  Wordsworth's 
imagination.  And  we  have  noted  in  an  earlier  chapter,  it 
is  peculiarly  true  of  Wordsworth  that  his  imagination  is 
the  product  of  the  elemental  powers  of  volition,  passion, 
and  sensitiveness. 

The  chief  point  of  interest  for  us  here,  however, 
is  that  this  conception  of  the  imagination  has  its  limita- 
tions, that  when  the  poet  tries  to  substitute  what  he  feels 
to  be  the  facts  of  absolute  reality  for  imagination  he 
goes  beyond  the  limits  of  the  power  of  poetic  represen- 
tation. It  is  all  very  well  for  a  mystic  who  sees  the  ab- 
solute facts  of  reality  in  his  symbols  or  even  in  a  deep 


ART    AND    FREEDOM.  IO9 

distress  that  has  humanized  his  soul,  to  disparage  the 
poet's  imagination  that  is  "housed  in  a  dream"  and  that 
loves  to  build  an  ideal  castle 

Beside  a  sea  that  could  not  cease  to  smile; 
On  tranquil  land,  beneath  a  sky  of  bliss. 

But  the  mystic's  sense  of  absolute  reality,  carried  to  its 
logical  sequence,  places  the  poet's  art  in  a  false  light. 
For,  in  his  substitution  of  the  supposed  facts  of  absolute 
reality  for  imagination,  he  encroaches  upon  and  limits 
the  poet's  power  of  idealization  and  creation.  The  poet 
can  never  avpid  being  a  creator,  for  that  is  his  highest 
function.  He  is  no  doubt  to  try  to  see  things  as  they 
are,  but  it  is  equally  important  that  he  should  create  new 
values  for  those  things,  and  the  mystic's  ideal  of  absolute 
reality  is  an  impossibility  in  a  world  where  creation  is 
going  on.  Are  not  the  "Elegiac  Stanzas"  themselves, 
from  the  artistic  standpoint,  a  refutation  of  the  mystic's 
theory?  Let  us  place  side  by  side  two  stanzas  from  the 
poem,  one  from  the  earlier  part,  in  which  he  tells  how  he 
once  zi'oiild  hare  painted  the  picture,  and  one  from  the 
latter  part  where  the  picture  is  given  in  reality : 

A  Picture  had  it  been  of  lasting  ease, 
Elysian  quiet,  without  toil  or  strife; 
No  motion  but  the  moving  tide,  a  breeze, 
Or  merely  silent  Nature's  breathing  life. 

*  5i:  *  *  * 

And  this  huge  Castle,  standing  here  sublime, 

I  love  to  see  the  look  with  which  it  braves, 

Cased  in  the  unfeeling  armour  of  old  time, 

The  lightning,  the  fierce  wind,  and  trampling  waves. 

Are  not  both  of  these  stanzas  creations?  Do  they  not 
both  have  the  added  gleam,  tiie  "consecration  and  the 
poet's  dream?"  And  does  not  the  first  possess  as  much 
reality  as  the  latter,  and  is  it  not  just  as  legitimate  as  a 


no  WORDSWORTH. 

poetic  creation?  Wordsworth's  poetic  art  defies  his  mys- 
tic theory;  and  though  in  theory  he  was  often  a  pure 
mystic,  in  practice  he  was  a  genine  creative  artist.  The 
poet  in  him  prevailed  over  the  mystic.  But  the  conflict 
and  the  renuciations  which  it  brought  with  it  were  bound- 
lessly fruitful.  For  out  of  the  struggle  between  the  mys- 
tic, who  by  the  intensity  of  pure  vision  would  have  his 
"eye  on  his  object"  and  would  see  "into  the  life  of 
things,"  and  the  poet,  who,  bound  by  his  art,  must  find 
words  and  concrete  imagery  in  which  to  express  his 
thoughts,  there  was  born  a  synthesis  of  the  actual  and 
the  ideal,  of  solid  substance  and  idealization,  that  led  the 
poet  a  long  way  toward,  yet  somewhat  on  the  hither  side, 
of  absolute  truth  and  absolute  reality. 

In  the  Second  Book  of  the  "Prelude,"  which  was 
written  considerably  earlier  than  the  Fourteenth  and  the 
"Elegiac  Stanzas,"  Wordsworth,  in  tracing  the  growth  of 
his  poetic  mind,  gives  a  less  mystical  and  a  more  just  ac- 
count of  the  poet's  idealizing  power: 

An  auxiliar  light 
Came  from  my  mind,  which  on  the  setting  sun 
Bestowed  new  splendour :  the  melodious  birds, 
The  fluttering  breezes,  fountains  that  run  on 
Murmuring  so  sweetly  in  themselves,  obeyed 
A  like  dominion,  and  the  midnight  storm 
Grew  darker  in  the  presence  of  my  eye: 
Hence  my  obeisance,  my  devotion  hence, 
And  hence  my  transport. 

Here  the  eye  is  on  the  object  and  it  also  idealizes  the  ob- 
ject. This  is  in  accordance  with  the  facts  of  realistic  de- 
piction and  poetic  creation,  together  with  the  power  of 
intensifying  by  mystical  vision. 

The  power  of  the  mind  by  which  this  unity  of  ideality 
and  actuality  is  effected  is  penetration,  or  vision.     The 


ART    AND    FREEDOM.  1 1 1 

measure  of  the  mind's  power  is  the  measure  of  the  tension 
we  feel  resulting  from  the  attempt  to  express  the  univer- 
sal in  the  particular,  the  ideal  in  the  actual.  The  whole 
history  of  Wordsworth's  literary  life  may  be  summed  up 
as  a  constant  and  persistent  endeavor  to  substitute  this 
power  of  vision  for  imagination  as  ordinarily  conceiv- 
ed, to  put  himself  at  once  at  the  center  of  eternal  being 
and  at  the  center  of  his  own  life,  and  to  make  those  cen- 
ters, not  imaginatively  but  actually,  identical.  To  at- 
tain this  end  completely,  however,  is  an  impossibility  for- 
ever, for  it  is  always  by  a  leap  of  imagination  that  the 
final  identity  is  made.  Perhaps  in  the  ''Ode  to  Duty" 
more  nearly  than  anywhere  else,  Wordsworth  attained  to 
this  identity  by  pure  vision,'  as,  for  example,  in  the  fol- 
lowing eight  lines  where  he  draws  the  power  of  the  inner 
and  personal  life  into  identity  with  the  "Stern  lawgiv- 
er"' of  the  outer  world: 

Flowers  laugh  before  thee  on  their  beds 
And  fragrance  in  thy  footing  treads ; 
Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong; 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee,  are  fresh 
and  strong. 

To  humbler  functions,  awful  Power! 
I  call  thee:  I  myself  commend 
Unto  thy  guidance  from  this  hour; 
Oh,  let  my  weakness  have  an  end ! 

But  even  in  these  lines  the  transition  from  the  thought 
in  the  first  four  to  that  in  the  last  four  is  made  by  a  leap 
of  the  imagination.  Thus  the  very  last  step  in  the  attempt 
at  any  such  identity  is  an  imaginative  step,  and  the  re- 
sult obtained  is  the  result  almost,  but  not  wholly,  of  pure 
vision.  Yet  it  is  precisely  by  such  an  aim  (even  though  it 
is  not  ideally  attainable)  and  by  such  an  intensely  mys- 


1 1 2  WORDSWORTH. 

tical  conception  of  existence  that  in  his  poetry  Words- 
worth, with  penetration  and  power,  has  drawn  together 
sense  and  soul,  'body  and  spirit,  earth  and  heaven,  has 
given  us  soHd  substance  and  intense  ideahzations,  has 
made  us  deeply  aware  of  the  mind's  forces  of  moral  and 
spiritual  Freedom,  and  has  won  the  distinction  of  de- 
pending more  than  any  other  poet  on  the  power  of  un- 
aided vision — the  power  of  volitional  penetration. 


CHAPTER  V 

TENNYSON  AND  HIS  TIMES. 

In  the  annals  of  English  Literature  Tennyson  has  not 
only  been  Wordsworth's  most  natural  mystical  successor 
but  his  greatest  successor  as  a  theorizer  on  the  principle 
of  free-will.     But  this  likeness,  of  course,  involves  deep 
i  and  serious  contrasts.    Wordsworth,  for  example,  gave  us 
\poetry  charged  with  mystical  intensity,  while  Tennyson 
Vor  the  most  part  described  objectively  some  of  our  mys- 
tical qualities.     Wordsworth  exercised  in  his  "high  en- 
deavors" the  power  of  free-will  concretely,  while  Tenny- 
son theorized  about  free-v.-ill  poetically.     Although  Ten- 
nyson was  never  able  to  penetrate  behind  the  veil  as  far 
as  Wordsworth  and  victoriously  render  a  reason  as  a  man 
who  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the  splendor  and  gran- 
deur of  the  eternities,  yet  the  man  who  could  write — 

Moreover,  something  is  or  seems, 
That  touches  me  with  mystic  gleams. 
Like  glimpses  of  forgotten  dreams — 

Of  something  felt,  like  something  here; 
Of  something  done,  I  know  not  where; 
Such  as  no  language  may  declare — ' 

possessed  a  sweetness  and  grace,  a  flexibility  of  mind  that 
could  adjust  itself  to  a  variety  of  impressions,  which  was 
denied  his  more  strenuous  and  giant-like  elder  brother. 


'"The  Two  Voices." 


114  te;nnyson. 

And  although  Tennyson  could  never  draw  God,  the  moral 
law,  and  the  power  of  free-will  into  a  union  with  as  strong 
a  hand  as  Wordsworth  has  done  in  the  "Ode  to  Duty," 
yet  his  statement  of  the  same  truth — 

But  curb  the  beast  would  cast  thee  in  the  mire, 
And  leave  the  hot  swamp  of  voluptuousness, 
A  cloud  between  the  Nameless  and  thyself, 
And  lay  thine  uphill  shoulder  to  the  wheel, 
And  climb  the  Mount  of  Blessing — ^ 

cleaves  a  pathway  directly  to  the  Alount  of  Blessing  by 
means  of  the  will  with  subtle  clearness  and  remarkable 
poetic  fidelity.  The  thing  to  say  is  not  that  one  man  was 
superior  or  inferior  to  the  other,  (except,  of  course,  when 
specific  and  definite  points  of  view  are  given)  but  that 
they  are  widely  different.  The  difference  between 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  is  to  be  measured  alone  by 
the  difference  of  two  separate  periods  of  time  and  by 
two  very  different  personalities.  What,  then,  are  the  chief 
characteristics  of  the  times  and  the  vital  qualities  of  char- 
acter with  which  we  must  begin  our  study  of  Tennyson? 
To  find  a  brief  statement  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
age  which  mark  the  formative  years  of  Tennyson's  life 
seems,  at  first  sight  at  least,  impossible.  It  may  be  con- 
tended that  if  there  ever  has  been  an  age  in  human  history 
marked  by  diversity  and  variety  of  tendencies  and  move- 
vients  it  was  the  age  of  Tennyson.  It  was  an  age  of 
insistence  on  personal  freedom,  individuality,  self-realiza- 
tion, specialization — resulting  in  endless  varieties  of  indi- 
vidual views, — an  age  of  free  scientific  investigation,  of 
discovery,  of  the  application  of  discovered  truth  to  prac- 
tical life  problems,  hence  an  age  of  reconstruction,  of 
breaking  up  traditions  and  fixed  customs,  an  age  of  re- 


^"The  Ancient  Sage." 


HIS    TIMES.  115 

adjustment  in  politics,  morals,  religion,  society ;  it  was 
also  an  age  of  bold  speculation,  ranging  from  the  lowest 
materialism  to  the  purest  transcendentalism,  an  age  of 
new  imaginative  flights,  of  "Sartor  Resartuses"  and  "In 
Memoriams"  and  Rabbi  Ben  Ezras" — how  shall  we  put 
all  this  and  much  more  in  any  comprehensible  statement 
or  give  any  adequate  description  of  it?  There  may  be 
some  truth  indeed  in  the  contention  that  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  race — in  its  movement  forward  to 
that  "Far  off  divine"  event  to  which  our  poet  has  des- 
tined it, — the  wonderful  nineteenth  century  marks  the 
period  when,  in  the  diversity  of  individual  demands  and 
achievements,  the  spirit  of  the  times  has  become  so  subtle, 
complex,  and  diversified  that  it  will  always  be  impossible 
to  sum  up  its  chief  characteristics.  What  will  be  true 
more  likely,  however,  is  that,  in  a  century  or  two  hence 
when  the  dust  and  smoke  of  the  nineteenth  century  shall 
have  cleared  away  and  men  shall  have  been  able  to  attain 
a  right  perspective  of  the  period,  this  age  will  not  be 
more  complex  nor  very  different  from  many  other  ages 
of  human  history,  and  that  there  will  be,  as  in  other  ages, 
a  few  fundamental  characteristics  that  mark  it  and  that 
prove  how  the  human  heart  and  mind  vary  but  little  and 
develop  but  little  from  age  to  age.  It  is  a  notorious  fact 
that  in  human  history  each  age  has  an  unjust  and 
a  most  distorted  notion  of  the  age  closely  preceding  it. 
The  age  of  Pope  had  an  unjust  notion  of  the  age  of 
Shakespeare.  The  age  of  Wordsworth  had  a  very  dis- 
torted notion  of  the  age  of  Pope.  Our  notion  of  the 
early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  may  have  thus  far 
been  unjust  and  distorted,  and  it  may  be  possible  that  this 
distortion  lies  in  the  notion  of  its  marvelous  complexity. 
To  be  sure  we  can  not  as  yet  obtain  an  ultimate  view  of 
it,  but  if  the  ultimate  view  lies  in  the  direction  of  sim- 


Il6  TENNYSON. 

plicity  perhaps  we  ought  to  begin  to  simplify  our  own 
conceptions.  Would  it  not  be  sufficient  to  say  that  the 
age  of  Tennyson  is  characterized  by  an  intense  love  for 
facts,  for  concrete  facts,  by  an  insatiable  desire  to  verify 
the  implications  of  facts  as  affecting  theory  and  faith, 
and  by  the  reaction  of  theory  and  faith  upon  facts?  In 
short,  the  most  serious  and  most  important  struggle  that 
was  going  on  in  the  age  of  Tennyson — a  struggle  that  is 
constantly  going  on  in  the  human  race  but  which  was  ac- 
centuated into  a  tremendous  conflict  by  peculiar  circum- 
stances— was  the  struggle  simply  between  fact  and  faith. 
The  age  of  Wordsworth  was  an  age  of  beginnings,  of 
youthful  exuberance,  of  awakening  to  the  value  of  con- 
crete facts  on  the  one  hand  and  to  the  power  of  wonder 
and  admiration  on  the  other.  It  was  an  age,  for  instance, 
which  demanded  to  see  a  perfect  nation  and  a  perfect  so- 
ciety in  the  immediate  concrete,  and  to  enjoy  the  wonder 
of  seeing  it  suddenly  precipitate  itself  out  of  the  air  and 
become  an  actuality — a  tangible  fact.     This  is  why 

Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive, 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heaven  !^ 

Yet  these  precipitations  were  destined  not  to  be  as 
sudden  as  the  people  imagined.  The  adjustment  of  abso- 
lute fact  with  trascendental  faith  was  a  far  greater  and 
much  more  difficult  task  than  they  ever  dreamed  of,  and 
the  reactionary  effect  on  the  French  Revolution  and  on 
Romanticism  was  to  awaken  them  to  this  sober  truth. 
But  when  the  hand  was  once  put  to  the  plow  there  was 
no  turning  back.  Men  demanded  facts  and  they  set  them- 
selves to  work  as  seriously  as  ever  man  has  done  to  find 
facts  and  to  adjust  their  implications  and  applications  to 
the  conditions  of  society  and  to  life. 


'"Prelude,"  Bk.  XL 


HIS   TIMES.  117 

But  this  adjustment  made  sad  inroads  into  the  grounds 
upon  which  men  rested  tlieir  faith.  There  are  in  man 
instincts  and  intuitions,  fecHngs  and  vohtions  which  h.e 
can  not  account  for,  and  the  highest  and  deepest  of  which 
he  has  always  held  sacred — so  sacred  that  he  instinctively 
repels  any  cold  analysis  and  dissection  of  them.  There 
is  also  an  ingrained  materialism  in  the  mind  which  can 
only  admit  facts  which  are  tangible;  and  this  latter  ten- 
dency had  its  full  swing  in  the  age  of  Tennyson.  The 
inundations  it  made  upon  matters  hitherto  given  to  faith 
were  simply  appalling.  There  was  now  an  endless  citation 
of  facts,  an  arrangement  and  classification  of  facts  on  an 
enormous  scale,  a  formulation  of  laws  and  systems.  The 
facts  of  astronomy  swung  the  center  of  the  universe 
from  this  earth  somewhere  into  the  milky  way.  The  cor- 
relation of  forces  was  applied  to  consciousness  as  well  as 
to  physics  and  chemistry.  The  facts  of  biology  were  as 
fascinating  and  seemed  to  have  as  great  a  practical  bear- 
ing on  life  as  the  facts  of  the  soul.  The  evolutionary 
principle,  itself  based  on  a  vast  collection  of  facts  and 
revealing  the  ruthlessness  of  nature  in  the  destruction 
of  things  unfit  to  survive,  struck  a  blow  at  faith  in  the 
goodness  of  God.  Bible  miracles  in  general  were  held 
to  be  the  product  of  superstitious  beliefs,  since  miracles 
can  not  be  facts  that  demonstrate  law.  Scientific  ma- 
terialism explained  higher  phenomena  by  lower  ones  and 
left  the  destinies  of  the  world  to  the  mercies  of  its  blinder 
forces.  It  blandly  set  forth  its  vision  of  the  last  state 
of  the  universe: 

Then  star  nor  sun  shall  waken, 
Nor  any  change  of  light; 
Nor  sound  of  waters  shaken, 
Nor  any  sound  or  sight : 
Nor  wintry  leaves  nor  vernal, 


Il8  TENNYSON. 

Nor  days   nor  things  diurnal; 
Only  the  sleep  eternal 
In  an  eternal  night.* 

And  enthusiastic  but  shortsighted  prophets  were  not 
wanting  who  boldly  declared  that  facts  would  soon  claim 
the  whole  of  experience  and  explain  away  all  mystery, 
and  who  politely  bowed  religion,  imagination,  and  poetry 
out  at  the  back  door.  But  there  were  those  also  who  held 
firmly  that  the  world  of  facts  included  only  a  small  part 
of  our  experience  and  that  the  deepest  and  most  perma- 
nent need  of  our  breasts  was  an  unseen  and  spiritual  or- 
der; that  however  greatly  the  world  of  facts  might  be  ex- 
tended and  enlarged  by  investigation  and  discovery  there 
was,  in  man's  inner  nature,  in  the  inexpugnable  citadel 
of  man's  soul,  a  center  of  being  far  beyond  the  reach  of 
facts,  and,  in  the  powers  outside,  where,  on  the  fringe  of 
things,  logical  thought  expires  and  speech  drops  into  si- 
lence, there  was  the  center  of  Nescience;  that  it  lay  in  the 
power  of  man's  will  to  invoke  from  those  centers  power 
and  truth  and  light  whose  rays  when  thus  set  ablaze 
would  light  up  and  irradiate  the  whole  world  of  brute 
facts  with  a  new  significance  and  a  splendor  not  really 
their  own ;  and  that  in  the  process  of  willing  these  centers 
into  activity  the  centers  themselves  would  draw  nigh  to 
each  other — the  finite  and  the  infinite — and  behold  !  man 
would  stand  face  to  face  with  his  God ! 

In  this  world,  however,  of  incompleteness  and  of  im- 
perfections in  character,  where  we  seem  to  belong  to  two 
distinct  orders  of  being,  the  power  of  faith  can  never  hold 
in  solution  all  the  items  of  fact ;  no  absolute  adjustment  of 
faith  and  fact  can  ever  be  made.  The  only  way  this  ad- 
justment can  be  made  approximately,  it  has  been  suggest- 


^Swinburne,  "The  Garden  of  Proserpine.' 


HIS  TIMES.  119 

ed,  is  through  the  power  of  the  will.  If  a  given  individ- 
ual has  a  keen  sensitiveness  to  facts  and  their  various  im- 
plications and  is  also  conscientious  concerning  the  purity 
of  his  faith,  these  powers  are  sure  to  bring  conflict  into 
his  soul.  And  if  his  will  is  not  as  strong  as  either  his 
sensitiveness  to  fact  or  his  conscientiousness  in  faith  he  is 
sure  not  to  be  able  to  make  a  satisfactory  adjustment. 
This  state  of  mind  is  clearly  revealed  in  much  of  the 
poetry  of  Matthew  Arnold,  who  fell  upon  the  "iron 
time  of  doubts,  disputes,  distractions,  fears" — the  iron 
time  of  Tennyson.  Such  random  passages  as  the  fol- 
lowing prove  it : 

And  on  earth  we  wander,  groping,  reeling; 
Powers  stir  in  us,  stir  and  disappear. 
Ah  !  and  he,  who  placed  our  master-feeling, 
Fail'd  to  place  that  master-feeling  clear. 

We  but  dream  we  have  our  wish'd-for  powers, 
Ends  we  seek  we  never  shall  attain. 
Ah!  some  power  exists  there,  which  is  ours? 
Some  end  is  there,  we  indeed  may  gain  ?* 


We  do  not  what  we  ought. 

What  we  ought  not,  we  do. 

And  lean  upon  the  thought 

That  chance  will  bring  us  through ; 

But  our  own  acts,  for  good  or  ill,  are  mightier  powers. 

Yet,  even  when  man  forsakes 

All  sin, — is  just,  is  pure. 

Abandons  all  which  makes 

His  welfare  insecure, — 

Other  existences  there  are  which  clash  with  ours.' 


'"Self-Deception." 
""Empedocles." 


320  TENNYSON. 

Next  to  a  weak  and  nerveless  will,  the  most  fatal  thing 
to  poetry  is  a  divided  v/ill  and  the  clash  between  our  de- 
sires and  affections  resulting  from  it.  If  there  is  any  be- 
ing on  earth  whose  eye  should  be  single  it  is  the  poet.  In 
his  essay  on  Burns,  what  is  it  that  Carlyle  fixes  upon  as 
the  prime  cause  of  Burns'  final  failure  in  life?  It  is  the 
lack  of  a  firm  religious  faith  and  singleness  of  aim.  "The 
wedge  will  rend  rocks,  but  its  edge  must  be  sharp  and 
single;  if  it  be  double,  the  wedge  is  bruised  in  pieces  and 
will  rend  nothing."  The,  f atality-of  this.tgith  is  nowhere 
better  illustrated  than  in  the  poetry  of  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough,  a  contemporary  of  Arnold  and  Tennyson.  It  is 
rather  pitiful  to  read  his  thirteen  stanzas  of  the  first  part 
of  "Easter  Day,"  which  has  for  its  refrain  "Christ  is  not 
risen,"  and  then  to  read  the  three  feeble  stanzas  compos- 
ing the  second  part  which  has  for  its  refrain  "Christ  is 
risen;"  and  to  see  how  in  this  poem  and  in  much  else  he 
has  written  he  calls  on  us  to  "Hope  Evermore  and  Be- 
lieve," but  makes  us  conscious  of  the  fact  that  his  own 
heart  and  v/ill  are  far  from  achieving  anything  of  the 
hope  which  he  offers.  Had  Clough  lived  in  an  age 
in  which  there  had  been  no  insatiable  thirst  for  facts 
whose  implications  undermined  the  grounds  of  faith  he 
would  no  doubt  have  written  far  higher  and  more  heroic 
poetry.  The  faith  which  a  poet  must  possess  must  not 
necessarily  be  an  absolutely  true  one,  (for  who  can  say 
what  that  one  is?)  but  it  must  be  a  faitJi,  so  that  the  feel- 
ings can  be  unified,  the  imagination  kept  whole,  and  the 
will  undivided.  Because  of  the  impotence  of  our  minds, 
this  faith  can  never  hold  in  solution  all  the  items  of  fact ; 
but  the  more  items  it  so  holds,  the  firmer  and  more  per- 
manent will  be  this  synthesis  of  faith  and  fact.  In  the 
age  of  Tennyson  there  was  such  an  inundation  of  new 
facts    that   only   the    firmest    and    most    flexible    minds 


HIS    TIMES.  I2L 

could  adjust  even  a  part  of  these  facts  to  their  faith  and 
could  construct  on  the  basis  of  this  adjustment  a  higher 
and  sublimer  faith. 

Since  we  have  now  the  essential  characteristics  of 
the  times  before  us,  let  us  see  what  were  the  chief  qual- 
ities in  Tennyson  that  fitted  him  to  be  the  representative 
of  these  times.  That  Tennyson  possessed  passion  and 
sensitiveness  sufficiently  to  produce  great  poetry  has 
never  been  questioned  by  anyone,  as  it  had  been  in  the 
case  of  Wordsworth.  What  one  is  mostly  aware  of  in 
such  a  poem  as  "Rizpah"  is  the  aroused  and  abandoned 
f eeHngs  of  the  character ;  and  this  is  eminently  typical  of 
Tennyson's  art.  Tennyson  throws  himself  with  complete 
abandon  into  the  story  or  the  theme  of  his  poem.  Although 
the  passion  in  Tennyson  sometimes  runs  near  the  senti- 
mental and  the  ranting  it  is  never  superficial  "There  is  al- 
ways method  in  his  abandon.  Those  who  hold  that  Ten- 
nyson is  too  sentimental  to  be  considered  seriously  have 
certainly  never  observed  the  method  with  care. 

In  the  portrayal  of  passion  Tennyson  always  holds  a 
middle  course.  Passions  may  be  ranged  on  a  scale  from 
the  superficial  hysterical  to  the  central  feelings  that  lie 
too  deep  for  tears.  Tennyson  avoids  the  extremes  of  the 
scale — the  one  extreme  because  the  passions  there  are  su- 
perficial, the  other  because  he  is  not  the  master  of  the 
profoundest  emotions  of  the  human  breast.  The  passions 
in  his  poems  are  such  as  can  be  understood  by  the  com- 
mon man,  but  also  such  as  require  some  effort  from  the 
common  man  to  comprehend  fully.  That  is,  though  he 
appeals  to  popular  sentiment  he  tends  everywhere  to  lift 
that  sentiment  above  itself.  The  "Miller's  Daughter"  is 
on  the  level  of  the  enjoyment  of  the  most  untutored,  while 
"Ulysses"  approaches  the  realm  of  lofty  and  concentra- 
ted art  that  lifts  the  soul  above  the  commonplace.     But 


122  TENNYSON. 

within  the  range  fitted  to  his  genius  Tennyson  gives  an 
ahnost  infinite  variety  of  impressions.  Among  the  great 
number  of  his  poems  there  are  none  that  exactly  repeat 
each  other  in  sentiment.  The  dehcacy  of  his  perceptions 
makes  the  finest  and  most  varied  shades  in  his  sentiments. 
The  quahty  of  sensitiveness — his  sensitiveness  to  all 
influences,  the  quality  that  expresses  itself  in  the  state- 
ment "I  am  a  part  of  all  that  I  have  met" — ^is  the  quality 
that  makes  Tennyson  peculiarly  the  representative  of  his 
age.  He  seems  to  have  been  susceptible  to  all  the  winds 
that  blev^  from  all  quarters,  and  to  have  responded  to  all 
of  them.  Wordsworth  from  his  childhood  was  deeply 
sensitive  to  the  elemental  powers,  the  great  central  forces 
of  being,  but  lover  of  nature  that  he  was,  he  needed  the 
influence  of  his  sister  to  teach  him  the  beauties  of  the 
small  and  detached  objects  of  nature,  Tennyson  needed 
no  one  to  teach  him  the  delicacies  of  perception.  His 
sensitiveness  did  not  have  the  depth  of  Wordsworth's  but 
it  could  take  in  a  greater  variety  of  impressions.  His  mind 
was  a  delicate  instrument  that  responded  to  and  register- 
ed in  itself  the  smallest  and  subtlest  impressions  that 
came  to  it  from  the  widest  varieties  of  sources.  It  re- 
sponded to  the  political  and  social  activities  of  the  age, 
to  the  scientific  and  religious  movements,  to  the  skeptical 
and  also  the  mystical  elements  in  those  movements,  to  the 
classical  forms  and  themes  of  the  past,  to  the  romantic 
tendencies  of  the  present,  to  the  beauteous  phenomena 
of  nature,  to  man  as  man  and  also  to  man  as  a  social 
being.  It  absorbed  something  from  all  these  and  other 
sources,  but  not  "overmuch"  from  any  one  of  them.  Not 
only  in  choosing  art  forms  but  in  selecting  subject  matter 
for  poetry  Tennyson  in  method  was  eclectic.  And  his 
mind,  sensitive  to  all  influences,  was  genuinely  and  deeply 
cultural,  in  the  best  sense  of  that  term. 


HIS    TIMES.  123 

Tliat  Tennyson  had  a  subtilizing  intellect  has  hardly 
been  sufficiently  emphasized  by  the  critics ;  for  his  perfect 
mastery  of  technique,  his  florid  style,  his  capability  of 
fine  phrasing,  of  saying  each  thing  in  the  poetic  way,  has 
permitted  him  to  reason  more  in  verse  than  is  generally 
suspected  in  him  or  tolerated  in  other  poets.  In  "In  Me- 
moriam,"  for  example,  there  are  many  patches  of  intel- 
lectual subtilty,  little  pieces  of  intellectual  logic  that  re- 
mind one  of  Pope;  with  this  difference  that  the  phrasing 
itself  in  Tennyson  is  often  in  strikingly  concrete  form  and 
that  his  intellectual  truth  is  placed  in  a  richly  ornamental 
setting  and  is  surrounded  with  a  dreamy  mist  of  beauty. 

That  Tennyson  possessed  unusual  energy  of  will  is 
debatable.  It  is  certain  that  he  did  not  possess  as  indomit- 
able a  will  or  as  victorious  a  faith  as  either  Wordsworth 
or  Browning.  It  is  equally  certain,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  he  did  not  possess  as  weak  a  will  as  some  have 
charged  him  with,  the  will,  for  instance,  that  might  be 
inferred  to  belong  to  the  speaker  of  the  lines — 

O  weary  life!  O  weary  death! 
O  spirit  and  heart  made  desolate! 
O  damned  vacillating  state ! — 

which  stand  at  the  conclusion  of  one  of  Tennyson's  early 
dramatic  poems.  Nor  did  he  allow  himself  to  be  severed 
from  poetry  simply  because  great  poetry  demands  a  uni- 
fied will  and  a  clear  and  delinite  assumption  of  faith  in 
the  unseen,  as  did  Matthew  Arnold  apparently  when  he 
laid  poetry  aside  and  found  satisfaction  in  the  more  mat- 
ter-of-fact business  of  prose-writing  and  acting  the 
part  of  the  man  of  the  world.  Even  though  Tennyson 
faltered  often  where  he  had  lirmly  trod  he  nevertheless 
"beat  his  music  out."  He  felt  that  life  was  a  genuine 
fight;  and  he  fought  the  fight  manfully;  he  squared  his 


124  TENNYSON. 

experience  with  his  highest  hght  of  truth ;  he  worked  not 
"without  a  conscience  or  an  aim ;"  he  clung  to  "the  mighty- 
hopes  that  make  us  men"  and  taught  others  to  chng  to 
them ;  he  beHeved  in  individual  responsibility,  and  never 
hesitated  to  take  his  share  of  it  upon  himself : 

Yet  none  could  better  know  than  I, 
'How  much  of  act  at  human  hands 
The  sense  of  human  will  demands 
By  which  we  dare  to  live  or  die." 

He  saw  clearly,  too,  that  the  reconciliation  between  fact 
and  faith  lay  in  the  mediating  but  inexplicable  power  of 
the  will.  So  that  the  point  to  which  he  comes  oftenest 
and  in  which  he  can  find  genuine  reconciliation  and  peace 
without  surrendering  manhood  or  paltering  the  truth,  is 
the  statement  of 

"This  main-miracle,  that  thou  art  thou, 

With  power  on  thine  own  act  and  on  the  world."^* 

This  sense  of  human  free-Vvdil  "by  which  we  dare  to 
live  or  die,"  this  power  which  we  have  on  our  own  acts 
and  on  the  world  is  a  miracle,  the  "main-miracle"  of  life. 
Suppose  historical  miracles  be  satisfactorily  proved  to  be 
superstitions,  suppose  all  the  forces  of  the  outer  world 
be  explained  by  mechanical  and  evolutionary  law,  yet 
here  in  the  inner  circle  of  our  being,  springing  up  in  the 
very  midst  of  mechanical  and  evolutionary  law,  there  is 
an  independent,  self-developing,  self-directing  power, 
v;hich  does  not  belong  to  the  category  of  lav/  and  which 
defies  all  analysis.  In  this  citadel  of  one's  soul  one  can 
do  battle,  if  need  be,  with  the  whole  world.    This  is  one 


""In  ^Icmoriam,"  Poem,  LXXXV. 

'"De  Profundis." 

*See  Note  5,  Appendix. 


HIS    TIMES.  125 

of  "the  mighty  hopes  that  make  us  men ;"  and  Tennyson 
never  surrendered  it,  but  used  it  in  his  experience  as  a 
great  meditating  power  between  fact  and  faith. 

Evidence  is  not  wanting  that  Tennyson,  in  his  youth, 
had  something  of  the  iron  in  him  that  characterized  Keats 
when  making  a  poem.  This  evidence  is  furnished  by  the 
manner  in  which  Tennyson  received  the  harsh  criticism 
of  the  reviewers  of  his  poetry  in  1833.  After  pointing 
out  some  definite  and  important  changes  that  Tennyson 
made  in  a  poem  as  a  result  of  Lockhart's  criticism,  severe 
and  exasperating  in  the  extreme  but  true  as  far  as  the 
faults  were  concerned,  Van  Dyke,  in  his  book  on  Tenny- 
son's Poetry,  adds :  "Now  a  poet  who  could  take  criticism 
in  this  fashion  and  use  it  to  such  good  purpose,  was  cer- 
tainly neither  weak  nor  wayward.  Weighed  in  the  bal- 
ance, he  was  not  found  wanting  but  steadily  growing. 
He  would  not  abandon  his  art  at  the  voice  of  censure, 
but  correct  and  perfect  it,  until  it  stood  complete  and 
sound  beyond  the  reach  of  censure."  This  method  of 
self-criticism  and  this  determination  as  touching  his  pur- 
pose of  becoming  a  great  poet  shows  the  volitional  and 
iron  side  of  the  man's  nature. 

But  Tennyson  was  almost  morbidly  sensitive  to  the 
implications  of  the  new  facts  of  his  age  and  he  was  ex- 
tremely conscientious  in  matters  of  faith.  And  the  true 
measure  of  his  will  lies  in  the  measure  of  the  power  to 
harmonize  these  diverse  tendencies.  It  was  no  small 
achievement  in  Tennyson  to  produce  harmony  here.  He 
considered  this  to  be  one  of  the  chief  concerns  of  his  life 
— an  achievement  that  would  require  time ;  and  it  did 
require  time.  There  are  plenty  of  falterings  by  the  way- 
side, and  he  who  looks  to  those  alone  may  well  agree  with 
Professor  Corson  that  Tennyson's  poetry  is  "an  expres- 
sion of  the  highest  sublimation  of  the  skepticism  which 


126  TENNYSON. 

came  out  of  the  eighteenth  century"  and  that  "In  ]\Iemo- 
riam"  in  particular  "may  ahnost  be  said  to  be  the  poem  of 
nineteenth  century  skepticism."*  But  as  it  is  es- 
sentially unfair  to  determine  the  worth  of  a  thing  by 
judging  it  in  its  making,  so  it  is  essentially  unfair  to 
judge  a  struggle  with  doubt  while  it  is  in  progress.  We 
care  not  what  stage  of  progress  a  man  may  be  in,  but  we 
do  care  about  the  direction  he  is  facing.  Moreover,  in  a 
poem  that  has  something  of  epic  movement  in  it,  we  must 
be  sure  to  take  in  the  swing  of  the  movement.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, one  should  judge  the  Book  of  Job  by  the  passage 
— "Behold  I  go  forward,  but  he  is  not  there;  and  back- 
ward, but  I  cannot  perceive  him ;  on  the  left  hand  where 
he  doth  work,  but  I  can  not  behold  him:  he  hideth  him- 
self on  the  right  hand,  that  I  cannot  see  him," — and  should 
forget  to  notice  in  the  conclusion  the  passage — "I  had 
heard  of  thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear;  but  now  mine 
eye  seeth  thee" — he  would  surely  have  misread  the  work. 
And  it  is  certain  that  "In  Memoriam"  must  be  read  in 
the  same  spirit  of  epic  movement  as  the  Book  of  Job. 
It  is  the  attainment  in  the  end,  the  spiritual  achievement, 
rather  than  the  struggle,  by  which  the  work  is  to  be  judg- 
ed. And  the  achievement  with  Tennyson  is  victory,  vic- 
tory before  he  had  attained  his  fortieth  year : 

O  living  will  that  shalt  endure 

When  all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock, 

Rise  in  the  spiritual  rock, 

Flow  thro'  our  deeds  and  make  them  pure, 

That  we  may  lift  from  out  of  dust 
A  voice  as  unto  him  that  hears, 
A  cry  above  the  conquer'd  years 
To  one  that  with  us  works,  and  trust, 


'  "An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Robert  Browning's  Poetry." 


HIS    TIMES.  127 

Witli  failh  that  comes  of  self-control, 
The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved 
Until  we  close  with  all  we  loved. 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 

Tennyson  explains  that  what  he  meant  by  the  first 
line  of  this  poem  was  the  human  will  as  distinguished 
from  the  divine.  It  is  our  ordinary  everyday  will,  the 
will  by  which  we  make  our  choices  between  alternatives, 
the  will  that  selects  ideas  and  gives  direction  to  our 
thought,  that  cultivates  some  feelings  and  avoids  others, 
that  motivates  and  gives  guidance  to  our  actions,  that  har- 
monizes and  unifies  our  personalities, — it  is  this  will  that 
is  the  enduring  part  of  us,  that  purifies  our  deeds  and 
lifts  us  above  time  into  eternity,  that  gives  us  a  lasting 
hold  on  faith  in  the  truths  we  cannot  prove  "until  we  close 
with  all  we  loved,  and  all  w^e  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 
xA.nd  through  the  remainder  of  his  life  and  in  all  of  his 
later  poetry  Tennyson  maintained  this  faith  with  an 
unfaltering  will.  Even  in  "Ulysses,"  a  poem  written  be- 
fore 1842,  we  hear  the  cry  of  a  strong  man  coming  to  him- 
self. Tennyson  himself  says  that  the  poem  was  written 
more  with  his  feeling  of  the  loss  of  Arthur  Hallam  up- 
on him  than  many  of  the  poems  in  "In  ^lemoriam." 
But  here  the  feeling  of  loss  has  already  been  transformed 
into  the  feeling  of  constructive  energy.  Like  "Lycidas," 
the  poem  gives  a  passionate  but  disinterested  outlook 
upon  life  of  a  young  man  roused  to  deep  thought  as  he 
stands  by  the  grave  of  one  of  his  fellows.  One  can  hear 
the  voice  of  the  poet  in  the  undertones  of  the  poem.  One 
can  hear  it  mingle  with  the  voice  of  Ulysses  as  he  address- 
es his  mariners  who  had  ever  taken  the  sunshine  and  the 
thunder  with  jolly  welcome : 

'"In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  XXIV. 


128  TENNYSON. 

Push  off,  and  sitting  well  in  order  smite 
The  sounding  furrows ;  for  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset,  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars,  until  I   die. 

To  succeed  greatly  a  poet  must  have  large  artistic  ideals, 
must  possess  ground  work  of  positive  faith  in  the  worth 
of  human  life,  and  must  have  the  energy  of  human  will 
to  endeavor  unceasingly,  against  all  distracting  interests, 
to  attain  his  artistic  and  ethical  ideals,  to  "smite  the 
sounding  furrows"  until  he  die.  A  will  of  this  sort — if 
not  the  greatest  in  power,  at  least  fine  in  quality — belong- 
ed to  Tennyson : 

That  which  we  are,  we  are, — 
One  equal  temper  of  heroic  hearts, 
Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  in  will 
To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield. 


CHAPTER  VI 

TENNYSON:  MEMORY  AND  THE  MYSTIC 
ELEMENT. 

I. 

Although  Tennyson  did  not  possess  as  intense  and 
penetrating  a  power  of  will  as  Wordsworth,  he  avoided 
some  of  the  excesses  of  sterility,  arbitrariness,  and  lack 
of  humor  accompanying  the  too  strenuous  exercise  of 
will.  He  retained  comparatively  a  greater  mobility  in  his 
thought  and  feeling  and  more  humor  in  his  life  and 
works,  though  there  is  neither  an  overabundance  of  hu- 
fmor  nor  a  lack  of  arbitrariness  to  be  found  even  in  him. 
\\'ordsworth,  we  have  seen,  fixed  his  mind  somewhat  ar- 
bitrarily upon  the  experiences  of  his  childhood,  and  by  the 
power  of  will  and  memory  reproduced  in  himself  an  im- 
mediate mystical  experience  which  he  thought  had  value 
as  giving  to  us  suggestions  or  intimations  of  immortality. 
Tennyson,  in  common  with  Wordsworth,  was  possessed 
with  the  same  romantic  "Passion  of  the  Past."  It  ex- 
pressed itself  less  arbitrarily  in  him  than  in  Wordsworth 
and  therefore  less  definitely  and  more  flexibly.  It  was 
not  so  directly  the  memory  of  our  childhood  instincts  and 
intuitions  that  was  "a  master  of  light  of  all  our  see- 
ing" as  with  Wordsworth,  but  it  was  the  more  general 
memory  of  certain  god-like  experiences  of  the  past,  and 
his  passion  for  tliem,  by  which  he  could  perceive 


130  TENNYSON. 

The  high-heaven  dawn  of  more  than  mortal  day- 
Strike  on  the  Mount  of  Vision.^ 

In  our  study  of  Wordsworth  we  saw  that  the  bare- 
ness of  his  interest  in  his  college  days  and  the  moral 
shock  sustained  from  the  French  Revolution  set  his  boy- 
hood experiences  before  him  in  bold  perspective,  and 
made  him  recur  to  them  in  an  unusual  way  for  moral 
support  and  for  poetic  material.  When  Tennyson  was 
twenty-four  he  received  a  similar  moral  shock  that  pro- 
duced somewhat  similar  effects.  To  a  mind  as  sensitive 
and  as  capable  literally  of  being  haunted  as  Tennyson's 
it  is  hard  to  conceive  how  great  was  the  shock  of  the 
death  of  his  fellow  student  and  most  intimate  friend. 
Then,  too,  there  are  times  wdien  an  idea,  or  a  theory, 
takes  hold  of  people's  minds  like  an  obsession.  The 
thing  seems  to  be  infectious.  Such  an  idea  was  the  ma- 
terialistic notion  that  man  is  not  immortal,  which,  borne 
on  the  wings  of  scientific  progress,  now  swept  through 
the  thoughts  of  the  English  people  with  ungovernable  rap-, 
idity.  Tennyson  was  caught  in  the  spirit  of  it  for  a  time. 
It  seized  hold  of  him  and  unmanned  him.  Such  an  idea 
is  always  doubly  and  trebly  powerful  when  it  is  connected 
with  some  specific  personal  fact.  The  fact  of  his  friend's 
sudden  death  and  the  fact  of  grave  men's  grave  doubts 
as  to  the  permanence  of  anything  human  or  divine  were 
easily  sufficient  to  plunge  the  young  poet  into  utter  de- 
spair, to  make  him  aware  suddenly  of  the  happiness  of 
past  days,  and  conscious  that  those  days  were  irrevocably 
past,  and  to  make  him  long  all  the  more  poignantly  for 
them.  No  wonder  that  the  finest  lyrics  of  a  great  lyric 
poet— "Break,  Break,  Break,"  and  "Tears,  Idle  Tears"— 
should  have  their  chief  motive  in  the  infinite  longing  for 


^"The  Ancient  Sage." 


TH&  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  I3I 

the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand  and  in  an  indescribable 
yearning  for  the  days  that  are  no  more.  In  each  case 
Tennyson  gives  himself  completely  to  the  emotion  of  the 
poem ;  and  there  is  no  consolation  in  either.  The  only 
relieving  elements  are  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  imagery, 
language,  and  music;  yet  the  ultimate  service  of  these  is 
to  enhance  the  poignancy  of  the  grief.  In  Wordsworth's 
lyrical  songs  that  express  yearning  there  is  always  an  un- 
der current  movement  of  resistance  to  the  yearning  itself. 
Xo  matter  how  much  Wordsworth  longs  for  the  radiance 
that  is  forever  taken  from  his  sight  he 

Will  grieve  not.  rather  find 
Strength  in  what  remains  behind,^ 

while  Tennyson  voluntarily  and  whole-heartedly  sur- 
renders himself  to  the  yearning  or  to  the  emotion  of  grief. 
Even  this  abandon  is  the  abandon  of  a  strong  soul;  and 
we  are  soon  to  see  the  poet  on  the  way  to  recovery  from 
the  severe  shock. 

It  was  natural  that  during  the  process  of  his  recovery 
from  the  loss  of  his  friend  he  would  produce  one  of  his 
longest  poems  in  memory  of  that  friend,  that  in  the  poem 
itself  there  would  be  a  thousand  backward  glances,  not 
to  his  early  boyhood  days,  but  to  the  days  of  love  and 
glorious  companionship,  days  of  walking  "beside  the 
river's  wooded  beach,"  of  reading  "the  Tuscan  poets  on 
the  lawn,"  of  divinely  singing  "old  Philosophy  on  Argive 
heights."  of  "threading  some  Socratic  dream,""  days  when 
the  first  raptures  of  conscious  authorship  were  at  their 
height,  when 

Thonght  leapt  out  to  wed  with  Thought 
Ere  Thought  could  wed  itself  with  Speech.' 


""Intimations  of  Immortality." 
'"In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  XXIII. 


132  TENNYSON. 

Tennyson  deepens  immeasurably  the  pathos  in  the  poem 
by  contrasting  endlessly,  in  the  subtlest  ways  imaginable, 
the  happiness  of  his  "four  sweet  years"  of  friendship 
to  the  emptiness  of  the  days  of  mourning  that  followed. 
It  was  natural  that  he  should  idealize  that  friendship,  and 
all  the  objects  associated  with  it,  as,  for  instance: 

And  all  we  met  was  fair  and  good, 
And  all  was  good  that  Time  could  bring, 
And  all  the  secret  of  the  Spring 
Moved  in  the  chambers  of  the  blood.* 

It  was  natural,  too,  that  the  poet's  scientific  and  some- 
what skeptical  spirit  should  make  him  perfectly  conscious 
of  this  idealizing  tendency,  and  aware  that  the  past  will 
always  win  a  glory  from  its  being  far 

And  orb  into  the  perfect  star 

We  saw  not  when  we  moved  therein." 

If  Tennyson  is  sometimes  dangerously  near  the  senti- 
mental he  is  never  naive.  The  scientific  spirit  which  help- 
ed to  plunge  him  into  unutterable  woe  also  taught  him  to 
distinguish  between  the  dream  that  has  orbed  itself  into 
a  perfect  star  and  the  fact  that  the  star  really  was  never 
seen  when  he  moved  within  the  orb  of  it.  Wordsworth 
had  a  vision  of  the  past  which  he  would  not  undo,  but 
upon  which  he  would  build  a  constructive  creation.  Ten- 
nyson's fancy  and  his  scientific  temper  made  him  set 
about  to  meditate  between  the  dream  and  the  fact.  And 
the  result  in  "In  Memoriam"  is  the  expression  of  a  deep 
human  grief  and  the  fanciful  and  pictorial  idealizing  of 
past  facts  and  associations  that  gave  rise  to  that  grief. 


*"In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  XXIII. 
'"In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  XXIV. 


Tllli;  MYSTIC  ELEMENT,  I33 

But  there  was  another  order  of  memory  in  Tenny- 
son distinct  from  and  above  the  memory  of  days  that 
have  been  and  never  more  can  be.  This  order  was  the 
memory  of  more  than  mortal  things,  of  something  that 
touched  him  with  mystic  gleams,  of  a  transcendental 
world  of  experience.  It  was  this  memory  that  led  to  the 
same  inner  mystical  experiences — confessedly  beyond  the 
power  of  words  to  render  adequately — that  were  for 
Tennyson,  as  for  W'ordsworth,  the  proof  and  seal  of  his 
faith  in  immortality. 

In  "The  Poet,"  written  as  early  as  1830,  Tennyson 
conceived  the  poet  not  only 

Dower'd  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn, 
The  love  of  love, 

but  he  imagined  the  poet  to  possess  mystic  insight  both  in- 
to the  secret  of  his  own  soul  and  into  the  "marvel  of  the 
everlasting  will:" 

'He  saw  thro'  life  and  death,  thro'  good  and  ill. 

He  saw  thro'  his  own  soul, 

The  marvel  of  the  everlasting  will, 

An  open  scroll, 

Before  him  lay. 

This  no  doubt  is  a  youthful  over-statement  of  the  might 
of  a  poet's  mind,  for  Tennyson  himself  was  soon  to  learn 
and  to  teach  in  his  poetry  that  there  are  a  few  things  in 
the  universe  that  even  the  prophetic  mind  of  a  poet  can- 
not sec  through,  and  that  one  of  these  things  is  the  marvel 
of  the  everlasting  will,  lx)th  the  will  of  man  and  the 
will  of  God.  But  in  the  same  edition  in  which  "The 
Poet"  was  published  was  another  poem  entitled  "The 
JMystic,"  in  the  following  lines  of  which  we  have  suggest- 
ed to  us  what  it  was  that  the  poet  "saw  thro' :" 


134  TENNYSON. 

Angels  have  talked  with  him,  and  showed  him  thrones: 
Ye  knew  him  not;  he  was  not  one  of  ye, 
Ye  scorned  him  with  an  undiscerning  scorn : 
Ye  could  not  read  the  marvel  in  his  eye, 

The  still  serene  abstraction 

Always  there  stood  before  him,  night  and  day, 
Of   wayward   vary-colored  circumstance 
The  imperishable  presences  serene. 
Colossal,  without  form,  or  sense,  or  sound, 
Dim  shadows  but  unwaning  presences 
Four-faced  to  four  corners  of  the  sky. 

What  the  young  poet  "saw  thro'  "  most  clearly  was  the 
fact  that  behind  this  immediate  world  of  form  and  sense 
and  sound  there  is  another  world  of  colossal  and  imper- 
ishable presences  "without  form,  or  sense,  or  sound,"  even 
though  this  world,  as  we  shall  see,  was  "far,  far  away." 
And  no  poet's  mind,  excepting  Wordsworth's  perhaps, 
has  ever  been  more  constantly  haunted  by  these  pres- 
ences than  was  the  mind  of  Tennyson. 

But  Tennyson  both  for  artistic  and  scientific  reasons 
scarcely  ever  attempted,  as  boldly  as  Wordsworth,  to 
render  these  presences  directly ;  but  he  described  them 
objectively  and  by  suggestion.  So  persistently  did  he  do 
this  that  there  is  hardly  a  page  of  his  poetry  that  does  not 
show  some  traces  of  these  "imperishable  presences." 
Constantly  and  in  endless  variety  and  in  "wayward 
vary-colored  circumstance"  there  hover  about  his  poetry 
mystic  gleams  and  mystic  voices  and  mystic  worlds  and 
mystic  laws — "the  law  within  the  law,"  "that  true  world 
within  the  world,"  "a  deep  below  the  deep,  and  a  height 
beyond  the  height,"  "the  lone  glow  and  long  roar,"  "far- 
folded  mists  and  gleaming  halls  of  morn,"  "from  the 
great  deep  to  the  great  deep,"  "echoes  roll  from  soul  to 
soul,  and  grow  forever  and  forever,  "an  arch  where- 
thro'  gleams  that  untravel'd  world  whose  margin  fades 


THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  I35 

forever  and  forever,"  "the  Holy  Grail  all  over  covcr'd 
with  a  luminous  cloud,"  and  arm  cloth'd  in  white  samite, 
mystic,  wonderful,"  a  city  "built  to  music,  therefore  nev- 
er built  at  all,  and  therefore  built  forever,"  truths  "deep- 
seated  in  our  mystic  frame."  "that  mystery  where  God-in- 
man  is  one  with  man-in-God," — but  one  cannot  go  on 
forever  with  the  "glimpses  of  forgotten  dreams"  that 
Tennyson's  poetry  awakens  in  one  and  that  haunt  one's 
fancy  and  echo  and  re-echo  in  one's  feelings  like  heavenly 
music,  now  "faintly,  merrily — far  and  far  away"  like  the 
"horns  of  Elfland  faintly  blowing"  and  now  vast  as  "with 
the  roll  of  ages"  that  carry  one  to  "the  utmost  bound  of 
human  thought"  and  also  to  the  inner  "deeps  of  person- 
ality," reverberating  and  again  reverberating,  faintly 
enough  to  be  sure  but  nevertheless  reverberating,  the 
central  sentiment: 

Speak  to  Him.  thou,  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit  with  Spirit 

can  meet — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and 

feet." 

That  Tennyson  considered  the  powers  of  memory 
and  of  will  to  be  the  chief  powers  that  enter  into  the 
mystical  experience,  and  that  they  are  the  chief  powers 
that  do  enter  into  it,  is  not  difficult  to  prove.  In  the  mys- 
tical state  there  always  seems  to  be  present  a  sudden 
feeling  of  having  experienced  something  like  it  before, 
only  something  more  heavenly  and  god-like ;  as  if  at  some 
indefinite  past  time  a  divine  gleam  of  light  had  been  giv- 
en one  by  which  he  had  power  to  lay  hold  on  the  unseen. 
To  all  mystics  the  faculty  of  memory  is  a  divine  faculty 
because  directly  by  means  of  it  they  enter  into  their  states 
of  rapture.    Tennyson  explains  that,  if  memory  is  merely 


'The  Higher  Pantheism.*' 


13^  TENNYSON. 

of  time,  and  the  body  and  mind  of  man  is  of  matter,  it 
would  not  be  possible  for  men  to  conceive  an  order  of 
•being  above  the  material: 

For  memory  dealing  but  with  time, 

And  he  [man]  with  matter,  could  she  climb 

Beyond  her  own  material  prime?" 

To  this  power  of  memory  which  receives  "glimpses 
of  forgotten  dreams"  there  must  be  added  the  power  of 
will.  In  a  letter  recorded  in  the  "Memoir"  Tennyson 
says:  "A  kind  of  waking  trance  I  have  frequently  had, 
quite  up  from  boyhood,  when  I  have  been  all  alone.  This 
has  generally  come  upon  me  thro'  repeating  my  own  name 
several  times  to  myself  silently,  till  all  at  once,  as  it  were 
out  of  the  intensity  of  the  consciousness  of  individuality, 
the  individuality  itself  seemed  to  dissolve  and  fade  away 
into  boundless  being."  The  intensity  of  mental  attention, 
the  act  of  repeating  a  name,  the  power  of  fixing  the 
mind  on  a  definite  object, — in  this  case  the  poet's  own 
personality, — these  represent  the  power  of  will  in  bring- 
ing on  the  mystical  state. 

The  most  elaborate  account  in  poetry  that  Tennyson 
has  given  us  of  this  state  is  found  in  the  ninety-fifth 
poem  of  "In  Memoriam"  wherein  the  powers  of  memory 
and  will  are  clearly  set  forth.  After  recounting  how  his 
friends  and  himself  had  spent  an  evening  in  singing  he 
tells  how  in  his  heart  he  desired  to  be  alone  and  to  read 
the  letters  of  the  dead  Arthur : 

But  when  those  others,  one  by  one, 
Withdrew  themselves  from  me  and  night, 
And  in  the  house  light  after  light 
"Went  out,  and  I  was  all  alone, 


'"The  Two  Voices." 


;  THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  1 37 

A  hunger  seized  my  heart ;  I  read 

Of  that  glad  year  which  once  had  been, 

In  those  fallen  leaves  which  kept  their  green, 

The  noble  letters  of  the  dead. 

Then,  when  the  silent-speaking  words  began  to  break  the- 
silence,  he  recounts  how  the  energy  and  power  of  his  love, . 
defying  change  to  test  his  worth,  responded  to  the  faith 
and  vigor  and  boldness  of  his  friend's  words  until  his 
friend  out  of  the  past  seemed  to  touch  him  in  the  pres-- 
ent: 

And  strangely  on  the  silence  broke 

The  silent-speaking  words,  and  strange 

Was  love's  dumb  cry  defying  change 

To  test  his  worth ;  and  strangely  spoke 

The  faith,  the  vigor,  bold  to  dwell 
On  doubts  that  drive  the  coward  back, 
And  keen  thro'  wordy  snares  to  track 
Suggestion  to  her  inmost  cell. 

So  word  by  word,  and  line  by  line. 
The  dead  man  touch'd  me  from  the  past 

After  thus  having  wrought  on  his  emotion  and  will  over 
the  letters  of  his  friend,  he  felt  a  sudden  mystic  trans- 
formation coming  on,  the  light  of  sense  went  out,  and  a. 
new  order  of  being  was  revealed: 

And  all  at  once  it  seemed  at  last 
The  living  soul  was  flash'd  on  mine. 

And  mine  in  this  was  wound  and  whirl'd 
About  empyreal   heights  of  thought. 
And  came  on  that  which  is,  and  caught 
The  deep  pulsations  of  the  world, 

^■Eonian  music  measuring  out 

The  steps  of  Time — the  shocks  of  Chance — 

The  blows  of  Death. 


138  TENNYSON. 

"Vague  words!"  the  poet  himself  ejeculates,  and  vague 
enough  they  are,  but  the  experience  itself  however  poorly 
described  carries  an  unquestioned  conviction  with  it  to 
the  mind  of  the  poet.  In  the  "Memoir''  it  is  recorded 
that  this  kind  of  experience  was  "not  a  confused  state, 
but  the  clearest  of  the  clearest,  the  surest  of  the  surest, 
the  weirdest  of  the  weirdest,  utterly  beyond  words,  where 
death  was  an  almost  laughable  impossiblity,  the  loss  of 
personality  (if  so  it  were)  seemed  no  extinction  but  the 
only  true  life."  And  the  poet  adds  in  the  record,  "I  am 
ashamed  of  my  feeble  description.  Have  I  not  said  that 
the  state  is  utterly  beyond  words?"  Professor  Tyndall 
reports  Tennyson  to  have  said  of  this  state,  "It  is  no  neb- 
ulous ecstasy,  but  a  state  of  transcendent  wonder,  asso- 
ciated with  absolute  clearness  of  mind." 

Another  elaborate  description  of  this  state  is  found 
in  the  "Ancient  Sage."  In  the  latter  part  of  the  poem 
the  sage  answers  the  skeptical  youth,  who  reads  from 
a  scroll  that  it  is  vain  to  tell  him  "Earth  is  fair  when  all 
is  dark  as  night,"  by  saying  in  part: 

The  doors  of  Night  may  be  the  gates  of  Light; 
For  wert  thou  'born  or  blind  or  deaf,  and  then 
Suddenly  heal'd,  how  wouldst  thou  glory  in  all 
The  splendors  and  the  voices  of  the  world ! 

But  the  youth  insists  that  men  are 

Worms  and  maggots  of  to-day 
Without  their  hope  of  wings ! 
The'  some  have  gleams,  or  so  they  say, 
Of  more  than  mortal  things. 

Then  the  sage  replies  by  emphasizing  the  fact  that  strange 
but  convincing  memories  of  the  indefinite  past  teach  him 
far  higher  things  than  the  common  experiences  of  to-day : 


THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  I39 

To-day?  hut  what  of  yesterday?  for  oft 

On  me,  when  boy,  there  came  what  then  I  calTd, 

Who  knew  no  books  and  no  philosophies, 

In  my  boy-phrase,  "The  Passion  of  the  Past." 

The  first  gray  streak  of  earliest  summer-dawn. 

The  last  long  strife  of  waning  crimson  gloom, 

As  if  the  late  and  early  were  but  one — 

A  height,  a  broken  grange,  a  grove,  a  flower 

Had  murmurs,  "Lost  and  gone,  and  lost  and  gone!" 

A  breath,  a  whisper — some  divine  farewell — 

Desolate  sweetness — far  and  far  away — 

What  had  he  loved,  what  had  he  lost,  the  boy? 

I  know  not,  and  I  speak  of  what  has  been. 

Thus  much  for  the  power  of  memory.  From  this  point 
the  sage  describes  the  way  in  which  his  mind  focused  it- 
self on  the  word  that  was  the  .symbol  of  himself  until  it 
brought  on  the  mystic  state: 

And  more,  my  son !  for  more  than  once  when  I 

Sat  all  alone,  revolving  in  myself 

The  word  that  is  the  symbol  of  myself, 

The  mortal  limit  of  the  Self  was  loosed, 

And  past  into  the  Nameless,  as  a  cloud 

Melts  into  heaven.    I  touch'd  my  limbs,  the  limbs 

Were  strange,  not  mine — and  yet  no  shade  of  doubt, 

But  utter  clearness,  and  thro'  loss  of  self 

The  gain  of  such  large  life  as  match'd  with  ours 

Were  sun  .to  spark — unshadowablc  in  words, 

Themselves  but  shadows  of  a  shadow-world. 

But  to  the  youth  who  still  insists  that 

Idle  gleams  will  come  and  go, 
But  still  the  clouds  remain; — 

the  sage  replies : 

And  idle  gleams  to  thee  are  light  to  me; — 

and  the  final  advice  of  the  sage  to  the  youth  is  that  he 
should  climb  the  ^Nlount  of  Blessing, 


140  TENNYSON. 

Whence,  if  thou 
Look  higher,  then — perchance — thou  mayest — beyond 
A  hundred  ever-rising  mountain  lines. 
And  past  the  range  of  Night  and  Shadow — see 
The  high-heaven  dawn  of  more  than  mortal  day 
Strike  on  the  Mount  of  Vision. 

Thus  through  the  inward  workings  of  the  will  upon  the 
memory  of  more  than  mortal  things  there  is  produced 
in  the  mind  a  sense  of  the  sudden  enlarging  of  the  per- 
sonaHty,  of  coming  in  contact  with  the  deep  pulsations  of 
the  world,  of  losing  the  self  and  passing  into  the  Name- 
less, a  sense  of  Spiritual  Freedom  in  the  heart  of  man  and 
in  the  heart  of  the  universe. 


II 


It  may  be  urged  that  the  ninety-fifth  poem  of  "In 
Memoriam"  and  the  "Ancient  Sage"  are  not  fairly  rep- 
resentative of  Tennyson's  large  body  of  poetry.  But  we 
are  here  concerned  with  some  of  the  spiritual  sources 
from  which  that  poetry  has  its  rise  and  with  something 
of  the  ground  work  upon  which  it  rests.  And  these  sourc- 
es and  grounds  are  defined  in  the  poems  we  have  analy- 
zed. What  Tennyson  does  in  these  poems  is  to  describe  a 
mood  of  the  mind  at  the  point  where  the  mind  feels  that  it 
comes  upon  "what  is;"  and  though  the  poems  may  be 
exceptional  the  experience  which  underlies  them  and  out 
of  which  they  are  wrought,  is  of  inestimable  importance 
to  the  poet. 

This  experience  has  validity  in  refuting  the  material- 
istic claim  that  there  is  no  life  beyond  the  life  of  the  sens- 
es, and  in  assuring  the  truth  of  our  faith  in  immortality. 
At  the  point  in  the  poem  "Two  Voices"  where  the  poet 


THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  I4I 

really  takes  heart  against  the  voice  of  the  skeptical  spirit, 
he  says : 

Who  forged  that  other  influence, 

That  heat  of  inward  evidence, 

By  which  he  doubts  against  the  sense? 

To  this  no  skeptical  philosophy  can  successfully  reply, 
for,  to  doubt  against  the  sense  is  to  believe  in  something 
other  than  sense,  and  the  heat  of  inward  evidence 
gives  assurance  of  that  belief.  It  makes  man's  heart 
forebode  a  mystery,  which  he  names  Eternity. 

But  this  fact  of  Eternity  nature  does  not  reveal  to 
man: 

That  type  of  Perfect  in  his  mind 

In  Nature  can  he  nowhere  find. 

Indeed,  it  is  not  in  the  sense  world  and  in  nature  that 
Tennyson  finds  an  answer  to  the  skeptical  spirit,  nor  the 
assurance  of  immortality.  He  frankly  accepts  the  mate- 
rialistic interpretation  of  sense  and  nature  as  a  vast  mech- 
anism based  on  chance  happenings,  and  he  needs  some- 
thing other  than  sense  to  give  him  a  positive  faith.  Words- 
worth found  passions  and  volitions  everywhere  in  the 
goings-on  of  the  universe,  living  entities  in  nature,  and 
from  thence  low  breathing  instincts  and  emanations  that 
have  a  regenerative  power  on  the  human  mind ;  a  moral 
spirit  that  flows  through  all  things,  that  transcends  nature 
yet  manifests  itself  in  sense;  an  organic  whole,  instinct 
with  power  and  vitality  and  especially  valid  to  the  mind 
when  flowing  through  the  channel  of  memory.  Tenny- 
son, on  the  contrary,  found  no  such  life  in  the  senses. 
The  sense  world  was  for  him  a  piece  of  soulless  ma- 
chinery ;  and  it  was  his  business  as  the  poet  of  his  age 
to  meditate  between  this  dark  aspect  of  physical  sense 
and  a  traditional  and  inherited  faith. 


142  TENNYSON. 

Thus  according  to  this  view  there  can  be  no  low 
breathing  instincts  and  intuitions  in  external  nature  that 
have  deep  and  subtle  correspondences  with  our  own  ex- 
periences. To  be  sure,  external  nature  may  be  used  not 
only  to  reflect,  as  a  looking  glass,  the  varying  moods  of 
man's  temper,  but  also  to  take  on,  in  a  fanciful  way,  what- 
ever mood  the  poet  wishes  to  give  her.  But  be  sure,  Ten- 
nyson would  say,  never  make  the  naive  mistake  of  sup- 
posing there  is  any  real  correspondence  between  the  spirit 
of  external  nature,  if  it  have  any  spirit  at  all,  and  the 
grief  and  despair  and  happiness  of  man's  spirit.  The 
correspondence  is  only  fanciful  and  ornamental. 

Again,  the  evolutionary  law  of  selection  played  havoc 
with  the  old  idea  of  design  in  nature.  In  olden  times  it 
was  supposed  that  the  fact,  for  example,  that  water,  when 
crystallizing,  became  lighter  and  rose  to  the  surface  in- 
stead of  sinking  beneath  and  thereby  preventing  all  the 
water  from  freezing,  showed  absolute  proof  of  a  wise 
and  beneficent  providence  who  designed  the  same ;  that 
the  wing  of  a  bird  was  designed  and  specifically  fitted  to 
the  bird's  flying;  that  the  eye  was  specially  designed  to 
transmit  rays  of  ether  to  the  brain,  etc.  But  the  new  wis- 
dom said  that  the  lightness  of  the  ice  was  due  to  one 
happy  chance  that  involved  in  the  process  a  thousand  dis- 
astrous possibilities ;  that  if  arrested  development  had  not 
set  in  just  when  it  did  thousands  of  creatures  that  do  not 
have  wings  now  might  be  blessed  with  them  and  be  as 
free  as  the  birds ;  that  we  might  have  a  thousand  senses, 
all  as  glorious  as  the  sense  of  sight,  or  we  might  have 
none,  but  by  the  slightest  accident  or  chance  we  have 
survived  with  five  senses.  Thus,  according  to  this  wis- 
dom, a  poet  might  be  ridiculed  for  basing  any  serious  po- 
etic representation  on  the  principle  of  design  in  external 


THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  I43 

nature.  Tennyson  declares  himself  quite  emphatically 
on  this  doctrine: 

I  found  Him  not  in  the  world  or  sun, 
Or  eagle's  wing,  or  insect's  eye.' 

Nor  did  he  fnid  him  in  any  other  old-fashioned  or  intel- 
lectualized  dogma : 

Nor  thro'  the  questions  men  may  try 
The  petty  cob-webs  we  have  spun.* 

Indeed  nature  seems  to  be,  in  certain  of  her  aspects, 
in  open  strife  with  God,  and  to  lend  man  evil  dreams. 
She,  of  herself,  is  blind,  because  she  works  by  the  law  of 
chance.  She  is  pitiless,  because  she  has  no  feeling  for 
the  individual.  She  is  malignant,  for  she  not  only  de- 
stroys the  individual  'but  also  the  type,  and  mocks  man's 
moral  and  religious  aspirations.  Tennyson  makes  exter- 
nal nature  say  to  man: 

'So  careful  of  the  type?'  but  no. 
From  scarped  cliff  and  quarried  stone 
She  cries,  'A  thousand  types  are  gone ; 
I  care  for  nothing,  all  shall  go. 

'Thou  makest  thine  appeal  to  me : 
I  bring  to  life,  I  bring  to  death; 
The  spirit  does  but  mean  the  breath : 
'I  know  no  more." 

External  nature,  according  to  Tennyson,  has  neither  the 
power  to  reveal  God  to  the  soul  nor  to  convince  man  of 
his  immortality,  and  to  a  man  in  deep  waters  as  regards 
faith  she  sounds  like 

An  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep." 


"'In  Alemoriam,"  Poem  CXXIV. 
""In  Memoriam,"  Poem  LV'I. 
""In  Memoriam,"  Poem  CXXIV. 


144  TDNNYSON. 

And  yet  "this  round  of  green,  this  orb  of  flame," 
this  "fantastic  beauty,"  is  not  absolutely  godless.  There 
is  indeed  a  god  behind  the  external  world  but  he  is  not 
directly  responsible  for  its  blind  forces  and  ruthless  de- 
structiveness.  He  can  be  seen  only  by  glimpses  and  far 
away  splendors,  for  he  plays  about  the  surfaces  only  of 
external  nature.  As  behind  a  far  away  summer  cloud 
the  lightning  plays  softly  in  a  quiet  summer  evening,  so 
on  the  farthest  edges  of  this  vast  external  universe  mystic 
gleams,  "green-rushing  from  the  rosy  thrones  of  dawn," 
vie  with  each  other  in  splendid  and  brilliant  display  and 

Vast  images  in  glimmering  dawn, 

Half  shown,  are  broken  and  withdrawn." 

Though  these  glimmerings  hover  only  about  the  outer 
surface  of  the  great  contour  of  the  universe  and  tend  to 
fade  away  into  misty  indistinctness,  they  are  of  much  im- 
portance to  the  mind  of  the  poet.  For  the  poet  joins  them 
in  his  experience  to  the  heat  of  inward  evidence  that  has 
its  roots  in  the  power  of  an  exalted  and  transcendental 
memory  and  makes  them  bear  testimony  to  the  fact  of 
immortality. 

It  is  barely  possible  to  explain  this  memory  as  the 
memory  of  a  pre-existent  state.  At  the  point  in  the  "Two 
Voices"  where  the  poet  waxes  strong  against  the  skepti- 
cal voice,  he  says. 

As  here  we  find  in  trances,  men 
Forget  the  dream  that  happens  then, 
Until  the}'  fall  in  trance  again ; 

So  might  we,  if  our  state  were  such 

As  one  before,  remember  much. 

For  those  two  likes  might  meet  and  touch. 


""The  Two  Voices." 


THE  MYSTIC  ELEMENT.  1 45 

This  explanation,  however,  is  only  tentative.  Tennyson 
feels  that  these  memories  may  be  memories  of  pre-exist- 
ent  life,  or  they  may  not.  We  cannot  be  sure.  But  there 
is  one  tiling  upon  which  the  poet  has  positive  conviction, 
namely,  tliat  he  is  deeply  conscious  of  strange  presences, 
such  as  no  language  may  declare,  which  are  bound  up 
with  an  inner  sense  of  memory  and  will.  It  is  this  ex- 
perience in  the  "Two  Voices"  that  keeps  his  horizon 
from  becoming  dark,  that  makes  him  apprehend  a  labor 
working  to  an  end,  tiiat  causes  him  to  hear  a  Heavenly 
Friend.  It  is  this  experience,  joined  with  a  picture  of 
human  love  in  the  poem,  tliat  gives  him  final  victory  and 
makes  him  rejoice. 

This  mystic  memory,  then,  serves  as  a  mediator  be- 
tween the  fact  of  scientific  materialism  and  the  fact  of 
immortality.  It  refutes  the  view  that  there  is  no  life 
•beyond  the  life  of  the  senses,  and  serves  as  a  seal  to  our 
faith  in  immortality.  Immortality  is  at  best  a  shadowy 
thing  for  us  here  below.  But  when  the  idea  of  it  once 
finds  lodgment  in  our  minds  its  claim  upon  us  is  well 
nigh  boundless.  Grant  its  reality  and  it  becomes  sover- 
eign in  the  mind.  And  it  matters  not  on  how  minute,  or 
trivial,  or  vague  a  fact  or  circumstance  it  rests  for  its 
verification  to  our  consciousness.  It  can  be  confidently 
said  that  had  Tennyson  not  had  this  inner  experience  of 
the  memory  of  more  than  mortal  things  he  would  have 
remained  in  the  "slough  of  despond"  and  would  have 
given  us  the  poetry  that  brings  the  eternal  note  of  sad- 
ness in  and  that  tends  to  settle  in  despair.  He  would  hard- 
ly have  attained  to  that  joy  and  positive  faith  that  a  man 
must  possess  when  he  aspires  to  become  the  represen- 
tative poet  of  a  nation  and  a  race. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TENNYSON :  FREEDO^I  AND  LAW. 


The  central  basis  upon  which  Tennyson  built  a  posi- 
tive faith  was  the  power  of  will  and  the  principle  of  free- 
dom grounded  thereon.  Even  though  he  could  not  find 
God  in  world  or  sun,  in  eagle's  wing  or  insect's  eye,  it 
does  not  follow  that  he  did  not  find  Him  at  all.  On  the 
contrary,  the  ardency  of  his  seeking  was  rather  intensi- 
fied as  a  result  of  its  being  narrowed  in  direction;  and 
while  the  scientific  views  he  held  regarding  external  na- 
ture narrowed  the  natural  and  mystic  tendencies  of  his 
experience,  they  tended  to  direct  him  to  seek  for  the 
truth  that  cannot  die  more  directly  within  the  soul.  And 
he  found  that  truth  in  the  "marvel  of  the  everlasting  will" 
and  in  the  miracle  of  the  power  of  free-will  in  man. 

But  the  theory  of  evolution  and  the  facts  of  science 
in  general  and  scientific  materialism  in  particular  placed 
strict  conditions  and  limitations  on  Tennyson's  notion  of 
the  power  of  freedom  as  well  as  on  his  conceptions  of 
external  nature.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  a  planet  in  its  me- 
chananical  and  unvarying  course  through  the  heavens  is 
governed  by  a  fixed  and  unchangeable  law.  It  is  even  easy 
enough  to  see  how  a  plant,  or  an  animal,  is  governed  by 
the  same  principles  of  unvarying  law  in  its  growth  and 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  1 47 

mechanical  round  of  activities.  It  is  easy  moreover,  says 
Scientific  Materialism,  to  see  how  man,  who  is  simply 
more  complex  in  his  make-up  and  shows  more  outward 
deviations  and  variations  but  is  ultimately  of  the  same 
material  which  composes  animal  plant  and  star, — ^how 
man  is  subject  precisely  to  the  same  inexorable  law,  and 
that  his  free-will  is  an  utter  delusion.  When  one  passes 
from  the  outer  world  of  mechanical  law  that  obviously 
guides  a  planet  in  its  course  to  the  inner  world  of  man's 
soul,  as  he  thinks  of  it,  he  is  more  and  more  impressed 
that  this  law  should  obtain  throughout.  At  what  par- 
ticular point  does  it  cease  to  obtain?  is  the  question  that 
is  decidedly  the  most  difficult  to  answer. 

Now,  Tennyson  is  duly  impressed  with  the  fact  of 
the  orderliness  and  the  mechanical  fixedness  of  the  uni- 
verse in  which  we  live.  He  surrenders  to  it  as  much  as 
any  poet  dare  surrender.  He  surrenders  the  stars  and 
all  the  hosts  of  heaven  to  absolutely  blind  but  unchange- 
able forces : 

A  star  that  with  the  choral  starry  dance 
Join'd  not,  but  stood,  and  standing  saw 
The  hollow  orb  of  moving  Circumstance 
Roll'd  round  by  one  fix'd  law.' 

And  societies  and  nations  are  to  adjust  themselves  to 
something  that  is  very  much  like  this  admirable  "Cir- 
cumstance roll'd  round  by  one  fix'd  law."  An  ideal  land 
is 

A  land  of  settled  government, 

A  land  of  just  and  old  renown.' 

And  the  people  who  dwell  in  such  a  land  are  those  who 
have  learned 


'•'The  Palace  of  Art." 
'"You  Ask  Me." 


148  TENNYSON. 

To  live  by  law, 
Acting  the  law  they  live  by  without  fear.' 

Although  this  ideal  of  law  by  which  societies  and 
governments  are  to  exist  enters  very  largely  into  Ten- 
nyson's poetry,  it  is  quite  evident  that  if  the  principle  of 
inexorable  law  be  carried  through  the  whole  of  man's 
experience  man  becomes  as  mechanical  and  soulless  as 
the  stars  that  run  blindly  through  the  heavens ;  a  web  will 
be  woven  across  his  soul  as  surely  as  it  is  "woven  across 
the  sky,"  a  ghastlier  cry  will  come  out  of  the  waste  places 
of  his  soul  than  from  the  "waste  places"  of  external  na- 
ture and  the  "godless  deep."  Tennyson  realizes  that  he 
is  caught  in  the  mesh  of  his  own  weaving,  or  rather  in 
that  which  was  woven  for  him  by  his  social  and  scientific 
environment.  He  saw,  more  clearly  than  most  men  see, 
how  deep  the  contradiction  really  is  between  the  postu- 
late that  man's  soul  is  immortal  and  free  and  the  assump- 
tion that  "nothing  is  that  errs  from  law."  Though  he  saw 
the  contradiction  between  freedom  and  absolute  fixed- 
ness, he  sometimes  fell  into  Charybdis  in  order  to  avoid 
Scylla.  One  of  the  mightiest  efforts,  however,  in  his 
work  as  a  poet  was  to  make  the  passage  successfully — to 
mediate  between  the  ideas  of  freedom  and  fixed  law,  be- 
tween personal  power  and  impersonal  force.  He  surren- 
ders much,  indeed,  to  fixedness  but  he  cannot,  and  never 
does,  surrender  all.  Even  the  will  of  man  itself  is  in- 
voked to  mediate: 

Thy  will,  a  power  to  make 
This  ever-changing  world  of  circumstance. 
In  changing,  chime  with  never-changing  Law.* 

But  the  fact  that  man  has  the  power  of  freedom  in  a 


'"CEnone." 

*"To  the  Duke  of  Argyll." 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  1 49 

world  of  "never-changing  law"  involves  no  contradiction 
really.  The  thing  itself  is  a  miracle,  a  great  and  forever 
indissoluble  mystery.  And  even  though  man  can  never 
know  or  explain  the  mystery,  he  is  to  believe  that  there 
is  ''never-changing  Law"  and  to  believe,  and  to  act  on  the 
belief,  that  there  is  free-will  in  himself. 

Now,  of  course,  the  will  is  not  boundlessly  free,  for 
the  material  upon  which  it  acts  is  conditioned  by  the 
powers  of  heredity  and  environment.  The  only  thmg 
absolutely  necessary  to  postulate  is  that  somewhere  at 
the  innermost  circle  of  our  being  (however  small  that 
circle  is,  and  in  Tennyson's  estimation  it  is  exceedingly 
small  in  our  present  state  of  development)  there  is  a 
self-directing  and  absolutely  independent  power.  And 
within  this  very  small  margin  man  must  work  out  his  sal- 
vation with  fear  and  trembling.  According  to  the  dis- 
closures of  scientific  truth,  however,  this  work  of  the 
self-developing  and  self-enlarging  process  of  the  will, 
will  take  aeons  of  time.  Man's  little  margin  of  freedom, 
which  is  the  proof  of  his  manliness,  his  immortality,  and 
his  far  ofi  ultimate  success,  must  not  take  liberties  in  in- 
terrupting suddenly  or  unexpectedly  the  orderliness  and 
fixedness  of  "never-changing  Law."  It  has  already  tak- 
en aeons  of  time  for  man  to  attain  the  little  increment  of 
freedom  which  he  now  possesses,  and  it  will  take  further 
aeons  to  touch  him  into  final  shape: 

Alan  as  yet  is  being  made,  and  ere  the  crowning  Age  of 

ages, 
Shall  not  aeon  after  aeon  pass  and  touch  him  into  shape?' 

Man's  will  is  thus  progressively  free,  and  attains  to  a 
larger  circle  of  freedom  by  slow  degrees.    Tennyson  says, 


"'The  Making  of  Man." 


I50  TENNYSON. 

"Man's  Free-will  is  but  a  bird  in  a  cage;  he  can  stop  at 
the  lower  perch,  or  he  can  mount  to  a  higher.  Then  that 
which  is  and  knows  will  enlarge  his  cage,  give  him  a  high- 
er and  a  higher  perch,  and  at  last  break  off  the  top  of  his 
cage,  and  let  him  out  to  be  one  with  the  Free-will  of  the 
Universe."  And  this  is  the  adjustment,  the  mediation 
between  the  theory  of  freedom  and  the  scientific  theory 
of  orderly  developement.  In  accordance  with  this  idea 
the  solid  earth 

In  tracts  of  fluent  heat  began, 
And  grew  to  seeming-random  forms, 
The  seeming  prey  of  cyclic  storms, 
Till  at  the  last  arose  the  man; 

Who  throve  and  brancli'd  from  clime  to  clime, 
The  herald  of  a  higher  race. 
And  of  himself  in  higher  place, 
If  so  he  type  this  work  of  time 

Within  himself,  from  more  to  more; 
Or,  crown'd  with  attributes  of  woe 
Like  glories,  move  his  course,  and  show 
That  life  is  not  as  idle  ore, 

But  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 

And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears. 

And  dipt  in  baths  of  hissing  tears,  , 

And  batter'd  with  the  shocks  of  doom 

To  shape  and  use  ° 

It  is  thus  that  man  seemingly  has  arisen  out  of  the  cos- 
mical  order  of  the  universe,  that  somehow  he  has  become 
the  herald  of  a  higher  race,  that  he  now  somehow  has  the 
god-like  power  to  "type  this  work  of  time  wdthin  him- 
self" and  to  grow  "from  more  to  more,"  that  he  has  at- 


'In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  CXVIII. 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  I5I 

tained  a  certain  slender  margin  of  freedom  and  can  grad- 
ually enlarge  this  margin;  and  that  he  is  called  upon  in 
this  life  to  enlarge  it,  to 

Arise  and  fly 
The  reeling  Faun,  the  sensual  feast; 
Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast 
And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die." 

But  the  general  fixedness  of  things  in  this  world 
makes  it  impossible  for  any  one  generation  of  people 
to  enlarge  materially  the  margin  of  free-will  and  the 
sphere  of  freedom.  If  one  generation  enlarge  them  but  the 
most  fractional,  infinitesimal  part  of  an  enlargement,  it 
has  indeed  done  well.  The  only  thing  one  can  say  con- 
fidently about  the  race  is  that  as  a  whole  it  is  facing 
in  the  right  direction ;  and  it  is  precisely  this  fact  that  is 
the  source  of  Tennyson's  optimism.  The  bird,  how- 
ever, is  as  yet  far  from  breaking  ofif  the  top  of  the  cage. 
It  has  not  always  mounted  to  the  higher  perch,  therefore 
that  which  is  and  knows  could  not  enlarge  its  cage.  The 
race  has  not  only  too  much  of  the  ape  and  tiger  in  it 
at  present  to  become  one  with  the  free-will  of  the  Uni- 
verse but  it  is  also  afflicted  with  taints  of  blood  and  sins 
of  will — it  has  not  done  its  positive  best.  So  that  the 
final  consummation  of  universal  freedom  can  only  be 
hoped  for  in  some  "far-ofif  divine  event,  to  which  the 
whole  creation  moves :" 

O,  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill. 
To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood; 


""In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  CXVIII. 


^52  TENNYSON. 

That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
'That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroy'd, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete/ 

The  most  conspicuous  element  that  enters  into  this 
theory  of  freedom  and  marks  its  pecuHarity  is  the  ele- 
ment of  time.  Time,  to  be  sure,  is  a  purely  man-made  af- 
fair and  its  order  is  not  applicable  to  Deity : 

For  was,  and  is,  and  will  be,  are  but  is. 

And  all  creation  is  one  act  at  once. 

The  birth  of  light;  but  we  that  are  not  all, 

As  parts,  can  see  but  parts,  now  this,  now  that, 

And  live,  perforce,  from  thought  to  thought,  and  make 

One  act  a  phantom  of  succession.     Thus 

Our  weakness  somehow  shapes  the  shadow,  Time.* 

That  is  from  the  "Princess,"  and  likewise  from  the  "An- 
cient Sage"  we  learn  that 

With  the  Nameless  is  nor  day  nor  hour ; 

Tho'  we,  thin  minds,  who  creep  from  thought  to  thought, 

Break  into  "Thens"  and  "Whens"  the  Eternal  Now. 

Though  God  is  the  Eternal  Now  and  transcends  altogeth- 
er the  time  category,  human  beings  on  this  planet  must 
needs  live  and  work  out  their  salvation  in  the  order  of 
<»  time.     In   the  age  of   Tennyson  the  truths   of   science 
I  brought  home  to  men's  minds  in  a  new  and  impressive 
\  way  the  immensity  of  time  and  the  vastness  of  its  accom- 
\panying  mystery — space.    The  fact  of  time,  for  instance, 
/filled  Carlyle's  soul  with  wonder  and  dumb  awe: — "That 
j^reat  mystery  of  Time,  were  there  no  other;  the  illim- 
itable,  silent,   never-resting   thing  called   Time,    rolling, 
rushing  on,  swift,  silent,  like  an  all-embracing  ocean-tide. 


"'In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  LIV. 
*  Part  Third. 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  ISJ 

on  which  we  and  all  the  Universe  swim  like  exhalations, 
like  apparitions,  which  arc,  and  then  are  not:  this  is  for- 
ever very  literally  a  miracle ;  a  thing  to  strike  us  dumb, — : 
for  we  have  no  word  to  speak  about  it."  This  same  fact 
greatly  enamoured  Tennyson's  imagination.  His  mind' 
was  constantly  haunted  by  the  vast  deep 

Where  all  that  was  to  be,  in  all  that  was, 
Whirl'd  for  a  million  aeons  thro'  the  vast 
Waste  dawn  of  multitudinous-eddying  light.' 

To  tlie  imagination  of  Tennyson  time  is  long  and  art  is. 
fleeting : 

The  fires  that  arch  this  dusky  do^ — 

Yon  myriad-worlded  way — 

The  vast  sun-clusters'  gather'd  blaze, 

World-isles  in  lonely  skies. 

Whole  heavens  within  themselves,  amaze 

Our  brief  humanities. 

And  so  does  Earth ;  for  Homer's  fame, 

Tho'  carved  in  harder  stone — 

The  falling  drop  will  make  his  name 

As  mortal  as  my  own.'" 

But  instead  of  impressing  his  mind  with  awe  and 
wonder  as  Carlyle's  this  fact  of  time's  immensity  g^ve 
Tennyson's  imagination  scope  and  freedom  to  build  vis- 
ions of  the  future  greatness  of  man.  Though  the  will 
of  man  be  hampered  by  original  evil — 

Perchance  from  some  abuse  of  Will 

In  worlds  before  the  man 

Involving  ours — '" 


*''De  Profundis." 

'"  Epilogue  to  "Charge  of  the  Heavy  Brigade. 


154  TENNYSON. 

and  though  the  general  absence  of  plasticity  and  the 
presence  of  fixedness  in  all  things  make  against  the  idea 
of  any  rapid  progress,  the  race  neverthelss  can,  if  it  is 
facing  in  the  right  direction,  arrive  at  the  fullest  reali- 
zation of  universal  freedom  in  the  latter  ages  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  profound  conviction  of  this  possibil- 
ity— for  it  is  still  only  a  possibility  if  man  is  free  to 
choose — that  animates  the  clarion  call  of  Tennyson  in 
the  "Locksley  Hall"  of  his  youth: 

Not  in  vain  the  distance  beacons.     Forward, 

forward  let  us  range, 
Let  tlie  great  world  spin  forever  down  the 

ringing  grooves  of  change. 

And  it  is  the  profound  conviction  of  this  same  possi- 
bility that  animates  the  clarion  call  of  Tennyson  in  the 
"Locksley  Hall"  of  his  old  age: 

Follow  you  the  star  that  lights  a  desert 

pathway,  yours  or  mine. 
Forward,  till  you  see  the  Highest  Human 

Nature  is  divine. 

Follow  Light,  and  do  the  Righit — for  man 

can  half-control  his  doom — 
Till  you  find  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in 

■the  vacant  tomb. 

This  last  passage  suggests  another  phase  of  our  sub- 
ject. We  have  thus  far  been  discussing  freedom  as  a 
social  and  racial  phenomenon.  But  it  has  a  most  impor- 
tant personal  side.  Even  though  the  noble  race  of  the 
far-off  future,  with  its  battle  flag  furled  "in  the  Parli- 
ament of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world,"  is  to  attain 
to  a  universal  freedom  such  as  we  in  no  wise  possess  at 
present,  it  does  not  follow  that  individuals  of  the  present 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  1 55 

generation  are,  for  that  reason,  condemned  to  destruc- 
tion ;  these  are  only  a  little  less  fortunate  than  those  of 
the  future  race  and  these  now  and  here  can  attain  to  a 
direct  personal  immortality.  In  the  immortal  state  we 
are  not  to  remerge  into  the  general  soul  of  things  which 
is  "faith  as  vague  as  all  unsweet,"  hut  we  are  to  retain 
our  personal  identity : 

Eternal   form  shall  still  divide 
The  eternal  soul   from  all  beside ; 
And  I  shall  know  him  when  we  meet." 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  in  the  order  of  exis- 
tence above  us  there  is  no  order  of  time  whatsoever. 
That  state  transcends  time,  and  from  its  point  of  view 
there  is  no  difference  in  time  in  our  various  arrivals  in 
its  state  even  though  we  are  separated  here  by  aeons  of 
time.  There  it  is  an  "Eternal  Now."  "With  the  Name- 
less is  nor  day  nor  hour."  This  is  the  w-ay  of  all  the 
mystics.  To  lay  hold  on  personal  immortality,  then,  we 
need  only  the  smallest  increment  of  free  choice ;  for  in  our 
wills,  however  conditioned  by  the  fixedness  of  the  ma- 
terials on  which  they  work,  we  can  even  here  transcend 
time — however  vast  in  its  extent  in  this  order, — and  be 
one  with  the  Eternal.  For  this  world  of  time  after  all  is 
a  dream  world  and  our  wills  are  the  only  reality.  This 
fact  is  communicated  to  the  unbelieving  youth  by  the 
Ancient  Sage: 

But  thou  be  wise  in  this  dream-world  of  ours, 

Nor  take  (thy  dial  for  thy  deity, 

But  make  the  passing  shadow  serve  thy  li'ill. 

Thus  personal  as  well  as  social  freedom  and  immortal- 
ity is  assured  us. 


""In  Mcmoriam,"  Poem,  XLVII. 


156  TENNYSON. 


II 


Now,  however  encompassed  by  narrow  limits  our 
wills  may  be  and  however  strongly  scientific  facts  may 
make  against  the  theory  of  freedom  itself,  it  is  vastly 
important  to  believe  that  we  are  free.  Life,  in  short,  is 
not  worth  living  if  we  do  not  believe  this.  Tennyson,  it 
is  said,  wrote  at  the  end  of  the  poem  "Despair:"  "In 
my  boyhood  I  came  across  the  Calvinistic  Creed,  and  as- 
suredly however  unfathomable  the  mystery,  if  one  can- 
not believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  human  will  as  of  the 
Divine,  life  is  hardly  worth  having."  For,  what  is  a  man 
more  than  a  beast  or  a  stone,  if  both  while  he  is  living 
and  while  dust  and  ashes,  he  is  to  be  whirled  through 
eternities  of  time  by  a  blind  and  inexorable  force  which 
has  no  pity  nor  sympathy,  which  cares  nothing  for  indi- 
viduals nor  types,  which  destroys  fifty  seeds  in  bringing 
one  to  bear,  which  knows  only  that  the  spirit  means 
but  breath,  which  shrieks  against  man's  creed  of  personal 
love  and  personal  life,  which  blows  man  about  the  desert 
dust  and  seals  him  within  the  iron  hills; — but  peace; 
come  away:  this  is  after  all  an  earthly  song.  Man  must 
have  and  does  have  a  personal  and  transcendental  will 
which  stands  absolutely  apart  from  and  independent  of 
the  dead  and  mechanical  and  impersonal  forces  which 
run  the  external  universe.  This  will  is  free,  indomitable, 
and  never-dying.  It  has  direct  business  with  the  Eternal. 
It  can  retain  its  identity  or  it  can  surrender  itself,  or  what 
is  more,  it  can  perform  the  miracle  of  doing  both  things  at 
once.  It  needs  no  intermediary  or  intercessor.  It  can 
make  its  own  intercessions  and  perform  miracles  by 
prayer.     "Alore  things  are  wrought  by  prayer  than  this 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  157 

world  dreams  of."  It  ends  in  marvel,  wonder,  and  mir- 
acle— it  is  indeed  the  "main-miracle"  of  life.  "A  thing 
to  strike  us  dumb,"  Carlyle  would  say,  "for  we  have  no 
word  to  speak  about  it."  However  feeble  one's  speech 
may  be,  "if  one  cannot  believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  hu- 
man will  as  of  the  Divine,  life  is  hardly  worth  having." 

In  fact,  what  is  true  of  Tennyson's  poetry  is  this; 
that  parallel  to  the  idea  of  law  that  plays  such  a  promi- 
nent part  in  his  poetry  there  runs  the  idea  of  the  mystery 
of  free-will.  To  say  that  the  idea  of  law  is  the  central 
idea  of  Tennyson's  poetry  is  to  utter  a  half-truth.  The 
other  half  is  the  truth  that  freedom  is  written  over  the 
whole  face  of  this  poetry.  In  the  "Idylls  of  the  King" 
we  learn  that 

The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfills  himself  in  many  ways, — 

that  is,  according  to  law  and  outward  orderliness  here 
below ;  and  it  is  also  written  in  the  "Idylls"  that 

Man  is  man  and  master  of  his  fate, 

and  that  the  purpose  of  these  "Idylls"  is  that  of 

Shadowing  Sense  at  war  with  Soul, 
Ideal  manhood  closed  in  real  man. 

In  "In  Memoriam,"  where  all  things  tcrrcstial  are  repre- 
sented as  moving  off  slowly,  grandly,  and  orderly,  as  if 
with  the  "roll  of  the  ages,"  to  some  "far-off  divine  event," 
there  is  written  at  the  beginning  of  it 

That  men  may  rise  on  stepping-stones 
Of  their  dead  selves  to  higher  things — 

and  at  the  close  of  it  that  there  is  the  living  will  which 
shall  endure  after  other  things  have  suffered  dissolution, 
and  which  shall  vouch  for  us 


158  TENNYSON. 

The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved 
Until  we  close  v^ith  all  we  loved, 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul. 

Likewise  in  the  "Ancient  Sage"  man  is  admonished  to 
avoid  the  swamp  of  voluptuousness  and  to  lay  his  up  hill 
shoulder  to  the  wheel  and  climb  the  Mount  of  Blessing; 
and  in  the  latter  'Xocksley  Hall"  to  follow  light  and  do 
the  right  until  his  human  nature  itself  be  transformed 
into  the  divine.  "I  have  heard  that  there  is  iron  in  the 
blood  and  I  believe  it,"  says  Gama  in  the  "Princess." 
And  it  is  just  this  quality  of  iron,  of  personal  energy 
and  personal  freedom,  that  makes  Tennyson's  poetry 
something  more  than  the  subject  matter  for  scholarly 
research  with  a  view  to  learn  what  the  age  of  Tennyson 
thought  and  felt.  It  is  this  that  makes  his  poetry  an  in- 
vigorating tonic  to  our  souls  and  that  saves  the  poetry  it- 
self from  vacillation  and  mere  virtuosity.  It  is  this,  in 
short,  that  makes  it  live  in  the  hearts  of  men.  Again 
and  again  when  Tennyson  seems  to  falter  at  the  stagger- 
ing notion  that  the  blind  destructiveness  of  external  na- 
ture and  the  rigidity  of  mechanical  law  make  sad  inroads 
into  the  sanctity  of  man's  soul,  he  falls  back  with  renew- 
ed energy  upon  the  main  strength  of  manhood,  the 
strength  of  will : 

O,  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong! 

He  suffers,  but  he  will  not  suffer  long; 

He  suffers,  but  he  cannot  suffer  wrong. 

For  him  nor  moves  the  loud  world's  random  mock. 

Nor  all  Calamity's  hugest  waves  confound, 

Who  seems  a  promontory  of  rock. 

That,  compass'd  round  with  turbulent  sound, 

In  middle  ocean  meets  the  surging  shock. 

Tempest-buffeted,  citadel-crown'd." 

i="Will." 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  1 59 

Life  is  a  fight;  it  is  a  fight  for  virtue,  and  the  glory  of 
virtue  is  not  only  to  fight  and  to  struggle  but  the  eternal 
glory,  which  is  really  something  higher  than  glory,  of 
forever  going  on : 

Glory  of  Virtue,  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the 

wrong — 
Nay,  but  she  aim'd  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she; 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on,  and  still  to  be." 

But  now,  if  life  is  not  worth  the  having  unless  one 
can  believe  in  the  freedom  of  the  human  will  as  from  the 
Divine,  what  is  the  best  and  highest  evidence  on  which 
such  a  faith  may  rest?  that  is,  when  one  is  driven  to 
extremities  by  the  hard  materialistic  facts  of  this  present 
world,  what  is  the  ultimate  experience  from  which  no 
higher  appeal  can  be  made?  Tennyson  says  that  if  mate- 
rial facts  and  the  colder  parts  of  reason  would  urge  us  to 
"believe  no  more," 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The   freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answer'd  "I  have  felt."" 

That  is,  after  facts  and  reason  have  been  given  due  rec- 
ognition there  is  an  experience  that  goes  beyond  these, 
an  experience  that  fact  and  knowledge  cannot  modify 
and  can  never  repudiate.  But  what  is  this  experience? 
Simply  nothing  other  than  a  volitional  feeling — the  mys- 
tical experience  we  have  already  described,  "the  clearest 
of  the  clearest,  the  surest  of  the  surest,  the  weirdest  of 
the  weirdest,  utterly  beyond  words:" 


"  "Wages." 

""In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  CXXIV. 


l60  TENNYSON. 

And  iwhat  I  am  beheld  again 
What  is,  and  no  man  understands ; 
And  out  of  darkness  came  the  hands 
That  reach  thro'  nature,  moulding  men." 

No  man  can  ever  understand  how  the  "I  am"  can  behold 
the  "what  is,"  how  they  can  call  to  each  other  and  hear 
the  calls,  and  how  the  latter  can  mould  the  former;  but 
so  it  is  written  in  the  tablets  of  the  heart  and  so  it  is  for- 
ever. And  this  stone  that  has  been  cast  aside  by  the  build- 
ers has  become  the  head  of  the  corner.  This  is  the  ex- 
perience from  which  there  is  no  higher  appeal — the  feel- 
ing act,  namely,  that  man  is  free  and  immortal  and  that 
he  is  under  lasting  obligation  to  exercise  his  freedom  for 
his  own  salvation  and  for  the  salvation  of  the  race.  It 
is  this  experience  and  this  alone  that  denies  agnosticism, 
fatalism,  and  determinism  and  all  other  hard  and  nega- 
tive isms  whatsoever.  It  is  this  experience  and  this  alone 
that  forever  denies  the  absolute  reign  of  mechanical  and 
impersonal  law,  and  it  is  only  as  a  miracle  that  we  can 
conceive  free-will  and  law  working  harmoniously  togeth- 
er in  this  world.  This  is  Tennyson's  mediation  between 
fact  and  faith. 

In  his  remarkable  essay  on  Tennyson  Professor  Dow- 
den  says  in  substance  that  the  idea  of  law  enters  largely 
into  Tennyson's  poetry,  and  he  is  right ;  that  mysticism 
does  not  enter  in  overmuch,  and  he  again  is  right,  though 
only  in  a  certain  sense ;  and  that  Tennyson  depends  chief- 
ly "on  a  great  development  of  knowledge,  especially  sci- 
entific knowledge"  for  the  future  redemption  of  the  race, 
which  is  a  blunder  on  the  part  of  our  critic.  About 
the  time  Tennyson  wrote  the  first  "Locksley  Hall,"  it 
is  true,  he  did  entertain  great  hopes  for  the  race  on  the 


'  "In  Memoriam,"  Poem,  CXXIV. 


FRKEDOM  AND  LAW.  l6l 

basis  of  scientitic  knowledge.  But  surely  some  allowance 
should  be  made  for  his  youth ;  for  the  man,  who  penned 
the  one  hundred  and  fourteenth  poem  of  "In  Memoriam," 
not  in  the  lirst  blush  of  youth  nor  yet  in  the  dotage  of  old 
age  but  in  the  very  prime  of  life,  squarely  denies  the 
position  taken  by  our  critic.  There  he  says  that  knowl- 
edge "cannot  fight  the  fear  of  death,"  that  "she  is  the 
second,  not  the  first,"  and  that,  cut  loose  from  love  and 
faith,  she  is  "but  some  wild  Pallas  from  the  brain  of  de- 
mons." No,  the  man  who  wrote  this  poem  in  his  mature 
years  certainly  cannot  be  charged  with  putting  his  trust 
in  scientific  knowledge  for  the  redemption  of  the  race. 
To  be  sure  it  is  quite  true  that  one  of  the  central  ideas 
with  Tennyson  is  that  of  "self-reverence,  self-knowdedge, 
and  self-control."  But  why  should  a  man  exercise  self- 
reverence  if  it  is  not  because  there  is  something  really 
miraculous  inside  him  which  demands  his  reverence? 
And  is  not  the  power  of  self-control  also  based  on  the 
miracle  of  free-will?  And  is  not  therefore  self-knowl- 
edge a  knowledge  of  the  mysterious  in  us,  and  an  order 
of  knowledge  wholly  diflr'erent  from  scientific  knowl- 
edge? There  is  no  doubt  that  Tennyson  held  that  the 
development  of  wider  scientific  knowledge  will  accom- 
pany the  self-development  of  the  will  and  the  increase  of 
freedom.  But  the  all-important  thing  to  see  is  that  sci- 
entific knowledge  is  to  be  only  an  accompaniment  and  by 
no  means  the  cause  that  shall  bring  greater  self-control 
and  broader  freedom  to  the  race  of  the  future.  This  is 
a  most  vital  distinction. 

It  is  quite  true,  as  has  been  stated,  that  in  his  early  life 
Tennyson  put  great  faith  in  scientfic  knowledge ;  and  it 
is  also  true  that  through  all  his  life  he  felt  under  obliga- 
tion to  give  that  knowledge  the  most  favorable  hearing 
and  to  square  his  experience  with  it — not  to  "make  his 


l62  TENNYSON. 

judgment  blind."  But  if  in  his  career  of  many  years 
there  is  any  change  in  his  attitude  toward  truth  and  hfe 
represented  in  his  poetry,  that  change  is  this :  that,  where- 
as in  the  first  "Locksley  Hall"  he  based  his  optimistic 
faith  on  scientific  knowledge  and  man's  determination  to 
move  forward,  in  "In  Memoriam"  he  questioned  and 
criticised  the  scientific  basis  and  found  it  wanting,  and 
placed  correspondingly  more  emphasis  on  the  living  will 
of  man  as  the  true  basis ;  and  lastly  in  the  "Locksley 
Hall"  of  his  old  age  he  repudiated  the  scientific  basis  and 
accepted  the  'basis  of  man's  power  of  acting  as  a  free 
moral  agent.  In  the  latter  poem  his  faith  is  practically 
as  optimistic  as  in  the  earlier  poem  but  the  basis  upon 
Which  that  optimism  rests  has  swung  from  scientific 
knowledge  to  man's  power  and  freedom  simply  to  follow 
light  and  do  the  right.    For,  in  this  latter  poem  he  asks : 

Is  it  well  that  while  we  range  with  Science, 

glorying  in  the  Time, 
City  children  soak  and  blacken  soul  and  sense 

in  cit}^  slime  ? 

No,  it  is  not  well;  but  if  man,  instead  of  ranging  with 
Science,  learn  to  trust  in  his  own  freedom  and  in  God 
there  is  as  much  as  ever  to  be  hoped  for.  Before  earth 
can  gain  her  heavenly-best,  man  must  learn  to  keep  the 
foutain  of  his  will  from  being  poisoned  and  a  "God  must 
mingle  with  the  game :" 

Ere  she  [Earth]  gain  her  heavenly-best,  a  God  must 

mingle  with  the  game. 
Nay,  there  may  be  those  about  us  whom  we  neither 

see  nor  name, 

Felt  within  us  as  ourselves,  the  Powers  of  Good, 

the  Powers  of  111, 
Strewing  balm,  or  shedding  poison  in  the  fountains 

of  the  will. 


FREEDOM  AND  LAW.  1 63 

In  the  development  of  Tennyson's  faith  the  penduhnn 
has  swung  slowly  but  surely  from  faith  in  scientific 
knowledge  to  faith  in  the  fact  that  "man  is  man  and 
master  of  his  fate." 

The  faith  of  Tennyson  was  a  "compound  of  many 
simples"  and  as  a  faith  it  was,  for  poetical  reasons  as  well 
as  religious,  a  thousand  times  better  than  no  faith.  It  was 
a  faith  of  his  time  and  served  him  and  many  of  his  gen- 
eration well ;  and  because  of  its  many-sidedness  and  com- 
promising nature  as  well  as  for  its  manly  strength,  it 
serves  persons  of  a  certain  type  very  well  to  this  day. 
But  its  limitations  and  shortcomings  are  only  too  evident. 
The  thing  to  be  pointed  out  here,  however,  is  that,  wheth- 
er for  praise  or  for  blame,  it  was  mediating  rather  than 
cieative.  Its  chief  weakness  lies  in  this:  to  conceive  free- 
will as  based  purely  on  miracle  and  to  conceive  law  as 
based  on  fixed  mechanism,  and  then  to  bring  these  two 
conceptions  into  the  world  of  common  sense  side  by  side, 
has  a  tendency  to  arouse  one's  sense  of  contradiction. 
Sometimes  the  poet,  in  his  insistence  on  miraculous  free- 
will flies  straight  in  the  face  of  mechanical  law,  and  again 
in  his  insistence  on  mechanical  law  he  flies  straight  in  the 
face  of  free-will.  It  is  a  perilous  path  he  Dursn^s,  and 
one  must  not  penetrate  too  far  below  the  surface  if  one 
does  not  wish  to  become  conscious  of  the  anomaly  of 
miracle  and  fact  jostling  each  other  so  closely  in  the 
world  of  common  sense.  See,  for  instance,  how  Carlyle 
deals  with  this  same  formula.  Carlyle  carries  not  mere- 
ly tlie  idea  of  free-will,  but  mechanical  law,  law  of  cus- 
tom, and  facts  great  and  small,  into  the  realm  of  the  mi- 
raculous and  the  wonderful.  "There  is,"  he  says,  "an  in- 
finite significance  in  fact."  Is  it  the  fact  of  time?  I' 
is  a  "veritable  miracle."  Is  it  as  insignificant  a  fact 
as  the  stretching  forth  of  your  hand?     He  says:  "Were 


l64  TENNYSON. 

it  not  miraculous,  could  I  stretch  forth  my  hand,  and 
clutch  the  Sun?  Yet  thou  seest  me  daily  stretch  forth 
my  hand,  and  therewith  clutch  many  a  thing,  and  swing 
it  hither  and  thither.  Art  thou  a  grown  baby,  then,  to 
fancy  that  the  miracle  lies  in  miles  of  distance,  or 
in  pounds  avoirdupois  of  weight;  and  not  to  see  that  the 
true  inexplicable  God-reveaHng  Miracle  lies  in  this, 
that  I  can  stretch  forth  my  hand  at  all;  that  I  have  a 
free  force  to  clutch  aught  therewith  ?"^^  With  Carlyle 
the  whole  world  is  all  miracle.  Whatever  one  may  think 
of  this  conception  and  its  implications,  the  conception 
itself  gives  a  unified  attitude  toward  the  world,  and  the 
author  of  it  possesses  the  constructive  and  creative  mind. 
But  Tennyson,  even  in  such  an  impassioned  and  freedom 
ringing  poem  as  "De  Profundis"  feels  that  he  must  stand 
with  one  foot  on  "changeless  law"  and  with  the  other  on 
freedom.  In  English  poetry  Tennyson  is  the  great  com- 
promiser between  many  views,  the  great  mediator  between 
facts  and  visions,  between  materialistic  truth  and  relig- 
ious truth,  between  personal  freedom  and  impersonal  law. 


""Sartor  Resartus,'  Bk.  Ill,  Chap.  VIII. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


TENNYSON :  ART  AND  LAW. 


This  principle  of  mediation  had  a  wide  influence  on 
Tennyson's  art  ideals  and  art  powers.  It  produced,  for 
example,  a  large  number  of  phrases  and  compound  words 
that  attempt  to  state  a  medium  position  and  that  are  char- 
acteristically Tennysonian.  Such  as,  "finite-infinite," 
"numerable-innumerable,"  "mystic  middle  state,"  "new 
things  and  old  co-twisted,"  "half-reveal  and  half-con- 
ceal," "not  like  to  like  but  like  in  difiference,"  "the  false- 
hood of  extremes,"  "changed  by  still  degrees,"  "not  swift 
nor  slow  to  change,"  "manhood  fused  with  female  grace," 
"in  my  grief  a  strength  reserved,"  "souls  that  balance 
joy  and  pain,"  "oh,  sweet  and  bitter  in  a  breath,"  "I  fal- 
ter where  I  firmly  trod,"  "and  faintly  trust  the  larger 
hope,"  "equal-poised  control,"  "man  can  half-control  his 
doom," — and  this  list  might  be  indefinitely  enlarged. 

This  mediating  principle  not  only  produced  Tennyson- 
ian phrases  that  attempt  to  express  both  sides  of  a  truth 
at  once,  but  it  had  a  moulding  power  on  the  larger  aspects 
of  his  thought,  and  produced  certain  mechanical  qualities 
of  style.  The  incident  in  which  an  English  statesman  m 
the  interests  of  conservatism,  quoted  the  passage  which 
speaks  of  England  as  a  land  of  settled  government, 
"where  freedom  broadens  slowly  down  from  precedent 
to  precedent,"  and  in  which  he  was  answered  by  another 


l66  TENNYSON. 

statesman,  who,  in  the  interests  of  HberaHsm,  quoted  the 
passage  which  speaks  of  Victorian  statesmen  "who  knew 
the  seasons  when  to  take  occasion  by  the  hand  and  make 
the  bounds  of  freedom  wider  yet," — this  incident  illus- 
trates the  balanced  way  in  which  Tennyson  expresses  the 
opposite  sides  of  a  subject  and  yet  "avoids  the  falsehood 
of  extremes."  He  sings  the  deeds  of  war,  but  is  an  advo- 
cate of  peace.  He  expresses  the  "calm  despair  and  wild 
unrest"  that  alternately  possessed  his  heart  at  the  death 
of  his  friend,  yet  he  counts  it  "crime  to  mourn  for  any 
over-much."  He  would  offset  meditation  wnth  action, 
and  would  balance  religious  fervor  with  skeptical  wis- 
dom. It  is  very  difficult  to  state  his  views  on  any  sub- 
ject, because  there  are  so  many  modifications  to  make. 
And  a  large  part  of  Tennyson's  practice  of  polishing  his 
verse,  was  the  practice  of  making  it  say  more  precisely 
the  qualifying  and  compromising  thing  he  had  in  mind. 
This  practice,  which,  on  the  mental  side,  is  mechanical 
rather  than  spontaneous,  accounts  in  a  large  measure  for 
the  mechanical  qualities  of  style  in  his  work  of  which 
many  readers  complain.  Take,  for  instance,  the  follow- 
ing stanza  from  the  eighty-fifth  poem  of  "In  Memoriam:" 

I  woo  your  love :     I  count  it  crime 

To  mourn  for  any  overmuch ; 

I,  the  divided  half  of  such 

A  friendship  as  had  master'd  Time. 

The  poetry  that  qualifies  the  amount  of  mourning  one  is 
to  allow  himself,  and  that  divides  a  friendship  into  two 
equal  parts,  certainly  tends  to  be  mechanical  rather  than 
spontaneous  and  creative. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  phrase  more  common  in  Ten- 
nyson than  the  phrase  "more  and  more"  with  its  numer- 
ous variations.     Everything  in  the  universe  is  produced 


ART  AND   LAW.  167 

by  slow  degrees,  and  Tennyson  doubts  not  that  "through 
the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs."  It  follows  that 
nothing  in  the  world  can  be  static,  and  also  that  notliing 
can  be  suddenly  transformed.  This  scientific  conception 
has  a  powerful  influence  on  Tennyson's  ethics  of  art. 
By  this  principle  he  cannot  send  his  characters  as  deeply 
into  the  valley  of  soul  making  as  he  otherwise  could.  A 
character  is  not  made,  or  should  not  be  made,  in  the  in- 
stant, by  some  powerful  birth-pang.  This  is  not  the  way 
of  "changing  by  still  degrees."  A  character  may  give 
vent  to  wild  and  almost  hysterical  passion,  but  he  does 
not  come  out  of  a  critical  experience  radically  different 
from  what  he  was  at  entering,  except  by  slow  degrees. 
Though  the  progress  of  individuals  and  of  mankind  de- 
pends on  the  miracle  of  man's  free-will,  yet  the  miracle 
must  work  itself  out  by  an  orderly  progression.  It  is 
pleasing  to  the  fancy  to  perceive  lines  of  progression  radi- 
ating everywhere  through  the  universe,  and  the  scientific 
mind  can  enjoy  the  poetry  that  reflects  these  progressions. 
Yet  the  ultimate  effect  of  this  conception  is  to  limit  the 
art  powers  of  the  imagination.  It  tends,  for  instance,  to 
hamper  the  imagination  when  it  is  engaged  in  creating  a 
great  character  undergoing  a  sudden  and  profound  spir- 
itual transformation. 

But  this  principle  of  mediating  between  the  fact  of 
scientific  materialism  and  the  fact  of  mystical  and  relig- 
ious faith  had  a  deeper  influence  on  Tennyson's  art  than 
the  influences  we  have  thus  far  been  considering.  Ten- 
nyson, we  have  seen,  was  a  genuine  mystic  who  found  the 
substance  of  faith  in  the  miracle  of  free-will  and  in  the 
direct  personal  experience  it  can  have  of  God.  But  in 
his  eflForts  to  meet  the  scientific  facts  and  not  ignore  the 
scientific  postulates  of  his  day,  he  surrendered  the  ex- 
ternal world  of  nature  to  mechanical  law,  and  the  world 


l68  TENNYSON. 

of  plant  and  animal  life  as  well  as  the  outer  world  of  man 
to  'the  same  law  for  the  most  part,  although  he  recognized 
that  God  had  begun  to  fulfill  himself  in  all  the  doings  of 
man.  And  in  this  surrender  he  was  robbed  of  much  po- 
etical material  for  the  expression  of  his  mystical  nature. 

In  the  case  of  Wordsworth  we  have  seen  that  all  this 
was  appropriated  to  use  in  his  poetry.  Although  Words- 
worth renounced  the  highest  mystical  experiences  which 
go  beyond  the  power  of  concrete  representation,  he  found 
that  everywhere  in  all  the  world  of  eye  and  ear  there 
were  living  pulsations.  Joining  these  to  the  power  of 
memory  and  the  moral  idea,  he  constructed  a  new  syn- 
thesis, investing  it  with  the  mystery  of  vital  movement 
and  literally  producing  a  creation.  This  creation  has  at 
once  solid  substance  and  intense  idealizations.  "All  the 
mighty  world  of  eye  and  ear — both  what  they  half-create 
and  what  perceive,"  all  the  highest  powers  of  man,  all 
the  simplest  qualities  of  a  child,  go  into  the  making  of  this 
synthesis.  Wordsworth  made  all  these  forces  subservient 
to  his  experiences  in  the  immediate  present ;  so  that  this 
half-objective  and  half-created  world,  possessing  deep 
correspondences  of  the  inner  and  the  outer  life,  and  shot 
through  with  mystical  tendencies,  was  not  a  mere  fanciful 
fabrication  but  was  in  substance  the  very  breath  of  his 
life,  the  very  stuff  of  his  being.  If  Wordsv/orth  is  rob- 
bed of  this  synthesis  he  is  robbed  of  the  props  upon  which 
his  life  and  experience  rest.  Wordsworth  was  a  genuine 
mystic  poet. 

It  would  naturally  be  supposed  that  Tennyson, 
who  was  equally  susceptible  to  mystical  and  religious  in- 
fluences and  who  was  as  inveterate  a  lover  of  -nature  as 
Wordsworth,  would  make  a  somewhat  similar  construct- 
ive or  creative  use  of  the  mystical  experiences  in  the 
realm  of  external  nature,  that  he  would  use  the  objects 


ART  AND   LAW.  I69 

and  powers  of  external  nature  as  the  embodiment  and 
means  of  expression  of  his  mystical  consciousness.  Not 
so,  however.  The  age  of  Tennyson  was  too  wise ;  the 
world  of  the  senses  must  be  surrendered  to  the  category 
of  mechanical  law.  It  required  nothing  short  of  the 
strongest  and  highest  creative  power  to  make  plastic  and 
to  pour  into  an  original  poetic  mould  the  vast  store  of 
raw  facts  and  the  stern  laws  which  men  deduced  from 
them  in  the  age  of  Tennyson.  Susceptible  as  he  was  to 
scientilic  facts.  Tennyson  could  not,  if  he  would,  take  in 
the  great  outer  world  of  eye  and  ear  and  spiritualize  it 
until  the  whole  should  flow,  as  it  were,  through  him  in 
dilating  measure  of  regenerative  moral  and  religious  pow- 
er. No,  the  terrible  specter  of  mechanical  law,  of  an 
evolutionary  unfoldment  widening  "with  the  process  of 
the  suns,"  of  a  principle  of  natural  selection  with  its 
possiblities  of  chance  happenings  and  its  direful  disclos- 
ures of  "Nature  red  in  tooth  and  claw," — this  spectre, 
dread  and  austere,  stood  like  a  two-handed  engine  "ready 
to  smite  once  and  smite  no  more"  the  naivete  and  simple 
dignity  of  a  Wordsworthian  conception  of  nature.  So 
that  Tennyson  was  a  mystic  without  the  natural  medium 
for  the  expression  of  his  mystical  consciousness. 

There  were,  nevertheless,  a  number  of  things  left  to 
do  in  the  direction  of  external  nature.  The  first  was  to 
treat  the  world  of  our  immediate  sensations  not  as  an  or- 
ganic whole  instinct  with  vitality  and  power  but  to  treat 
those  sensations  in  their  varying  and  beautiful  physiologi- 
cal manifestations  as  an  ornament  to  poetry.  And  Tenny- 
son never  wearies  in  describing  the  shifting  scenes  of  sea 
and  wave,  and  sky  and  cloud,  and  wood  and  wold,  and  leaf 
and  bud,  with  a  hand  that  surpasses  the  cunning  of  all 
other  hands,  whatsoever.  Another  thing  to  do  was  to 
make  nature  reflect,  in  a  fanciful  way,  the  varying  moods 


lyo  TENNYSON. 

of  man's  temper  or  to  make  her  take  on  whatever  mood 
the  poet  wished  to  give  her.  And  a  third  was  to  treat 
those  sensations  that  come  to  us  from  the  distant  hori- 
zon of  things  and  that  he  beyond  the  reahn  of  scientfic 
analysis  as  mystical  manifestations  of  divinity,  messen- 
gers of  a  higher  life  of  freedom,  immortality,  and  God; 
for. 

On  the  glimmering  limit  far  withdrawn, 
God  made  Himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn.^ 

Just  as  there  are  two  orders  of  memory  in  Tennyson, 
— the  memory  of  every  day  things  and  the  memory  of 
more  than  mortal  things, — so  there  are  two  orders  of 
sensations — the  sensations  of  ordinary  life  and  nature 
around  us  and  the  sensations  that  come  from  the  "high 
land"  that  "ranges  above  the  region  of  the  wind"  and 
that  extends 

Thro'  all  the  silent  spaces  of  the  worlds, 
Beyond  all  thought  into  the  heaven  of  heavens." 

In  Wordsworth  there  was  only  one  order  of  memory 
and  one  order  of  sensations.  For  Wordsworth  grasps 
the  things  of  memory  and  sensation  at  a  point  where  they 
are  but  a  part  of  an  universal  and  spiritualized  whole. 
This  indicates  that  Wordsworth  is  a  more  thorough-going 
and  a  more  profound  mystic  than  Tennyson,  and  that 
Tennyson,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  more  popular  mystic. 
For  it  requires  at  once  the  strength  of  the  whole  mind 
to  grasp  Wordsworth's  universals;  while  the  common- 
sense  element  in  us  responds  to  Tennyson's  every  day 
memories  and  sensations  and  the  fanciful  element  in  us 
responds  to  his  mystic  gleams.    More  readers  can  follow 


^  "The  Vision  of  Sin." 

'  "The  Princess,"  Conclusion. 


ART  AND  LAW.  I7I 

Tennyson  with  ease  than  Wordsworth.  Tennyson  ap- 
peals especially  to  a  matter-of-fact  mind  endowed  with  a 
lively  fancy. 

The  facts  we  have  been  considering  in  this  chapter 
also  explain  why  Tennyson,  perhaps  more  than  any  other 
modern  poet,  has  made  use  of  what  Ruskin  calls  the 
"pathetic  fallacy."  Near  the  close  of  his  own  treatment 
of  the  subject  Ruskin  says:  "I  cannot  quit  the  subject 
without  giving  two  more  instances,  both  exquisite,  of  the 
pathetic  fallacy,  Avhich  I  have  come  upon  in  'j\Iaud ;'  " 
and  had  he  looked  further  in  "Maud"  he  would  have 
found  many  more  instances  to  hand : 

All  night  have  the  roses  heard 

The  flute,  violin,  bassoon ; 

All  night  has  the  casement  jessamine  stirred 

To  the  dancers  dancing  in  tune. 

Of  course,  the  roses  did  not  hear  the  music,  nor  did 
the  jessamine  respond  to  the  dancing  in  fact,  nor  did 
hundreds  of  other  natural  objects  Tennyson  mentions  in 
this  and  other  poems  do  in  fact  what  he  says  they  do. 
The  explanation  of  why  Tennyson  makes  the  roses  listen 
to  the  music  does  not  lie  in  the  fact,  as  some  persons 
have  thought,  that  the  speaker  in  the  poem  tends  to  be 
somewhat  hysterical  and  is  carried  away  by  his  feelings. 
For  Tennyson  makes  frequent  use  of  the  same  method  in 
poems  where  the  speaker  is  not  supposed  to  be  hysterical, 
as  in  numerous  cases  in  "In  Memoriam."  Nor  does  Rus- 
kin's  explanation  that  the  poet  feels  strongly,  thinks 
weakly,  and  sees  untruly,  either  go  to  the  root  of  the  mat- 
ter or  do  justice  to  Tennyson. 

The  explanation  why  Tennyson  uses  the  pathetic  fal- 
lacy extensively  lies  in  the  facts  we  have  already  hinted, 
the  facts,  first,  that  he  was  an  unusually  great  lover  of 


172  TENNYSON. 

nature,  and  second,  that  he  conceived  the  inner  forces 
of  nature  as  a  lifeless  piece  of  machinery,  and  thirdly, 
that  his  poetic  fancy  was  always  strong  and  active.  He 
would  describe  accurately  the  objects  of  nature  in  their 
physiological  beauty.  He  would  boldly  and  deliberately 
adopt  the  poetic  method  of  making  the  objects  of  nature, 
which  for  him  had  no  imaginative  or  spiritual  life,refiect 
or  take  on  fancifully  whatever  mood  he  chose  to  give 
them.  He  would  use  them  purely  as  a  convention  in  art, 
and  would  have  it  understood  that  no  one  is  to  be  so  fool- 
ish as  to  suppose  that  the  rose  really  heard  any  music  or 
the  jessamine  stirred  to  the  dancing.  He  would  set  his 
human  characters  in  the  most  beautiful  natural  surround- 
ings and  in  that  kind  of  nature  environment  that,  by  an- 
alogy and  only  by  analogy,  would  be  most  directly  in  har- 
mony with  the  moods  or  the  spiritual  experiences  of  his 
character.  When,  in  "In  Memoriam,"  he  wishes  to  express 
the  feehng  of  "calm  despair,"  he  surrounds  us  with  the  at- 
mosphere of  an  unusually  calm  day;  when  he  wishes  to 
express  the  'wild  unrest  that  lives  in  woe"  he  surrounds 
us  with  a  night  of  high  winds,  curling  waters,  and  crack- 
ing forests.  Two  lines  from  the  thirtieth  poem  and  two 
lines  from  the  seventy-eigth  poem  of  "In  Memoriam"  set 
side  by  side  will  illustrate  his  method: 

A  rainy  cloud  possess'd  the  earth, 
And  sadly  fell  our  Christmas-eve. 

The  silent  snow  possess'd  the  earth, 
And  calmly  fell  our  Christmas-eve. 

Not  only  do  his  calms  and  storms,  and  his  clouds  and 
snows  help  to  reflect  and  express  the  human  mood,  but 
very  often  his  "rose  weeps"  and  his  "lily  whispers"  and 
both  his  rose  and  lily  once  lay  awake  all  night  sighing  for 
the  coming  of  the  dawn  and  a  woman.     It  is  not  that 


ART  AND  LAW.  I73 

Tennyson  thinks  weakly  or  sees  untruly,  but  it  is  simply 
that  he  has  deliberately  chosen  objects  of  nature  that 
he  loved  as  a  vehicle  of  expression,  a  mode  of  represent- 
mg  the  human  feelings. 

The  justification  for  this  method  is  that  it  is  a  legiti- 
mate convention  of  art,  and  that  it  made  Tennyson  suc- 
ceed better  than  he  could  have  succeeded  in  any  other 
way.  He  succeeded  in  retaining  and  reflecting  to  the  full 
in  his  poetry  the  wondrous  physiological  beauty  in  which 
our  world  is  clothed.  He  retained,  too,  a  strict  regard  for 
the  scientific  laws  and  the  scientific  postulates  of  his  day, 
which  were  something  like  ultimate  truths  to  him.  He 
may  not  have  believed  absolutely  that  nature  is  soulless, 
for  Tennyson  believed  nothing  overmuch ;  but  he  cer- 
tainly never  allowed  himself  to  say  that  the  Eternal  Soul 
is  clothed  in  a  brook  with  purer  robes  than  those  of  flesh 
and  blood.  He  would  not  outrage  the  scientific  formula 
so  flagrantly.  And  in  his  insistent  use  of  the  convention 
of  making  nature  reflect  the  moods  of  man  he  succeeded 
in  showing  new  uses  to  which  the  convention  can  be  put. 
Within  the  limits  of  these  ideals  in  the  treatment  of  na- 
ture Tennyson  has  never  been  surpassed,  and,  it  is  safe 
to  say,  will  never  be  superseded. 

There  are,  however,  objections  to  this  art,  for  it  does 
not  represent  the  highest  nor  the  deepest  way  to  treat 
nature.  One  objection  is  that  this  kind  of  treatment  be- 
comes tiresome.  When  King  Lear  is  driven  out  into  the 
night  and  made  shelterless  by  his  daughters  it  is  no  doubt 
a  fine  stroke  of  the  artist  to  make  the  night  rage  with  a 
tempest  at  the  point  of  time  where  the  tempest  in  Lear's 
breast  has  reached  the  limit.  But  if  Shakespeare  there- 
upon were  to  create  a  physical  tempest  every  time  his  hero 
experiences  a  conflict  in  his  soul  the  art  would  become 
tedious,  and  the  convention  obtrusive.     Because  a  thing 


174  TENNYSON. 

is  successful  in  art  once,  is  not  a  sufficient  warrant  that 
it  may  be  used  repeatedly.  And  this  is  the  weakness  in 
Tennyson  as  regards  the  convention  in  question. 

But  there  is  a  still  deeper  objection  to  this  art.  In  his 
zeal  for  scientific  truth  and  respect  for  scientific  postu- 
lates Tennyson  lost  rather  than  gained  for  art  power  and 
art  truth.  He  surrendered  too  easily  to  the  spectre  of 
mechanical  law.  In  a  world  where  a  man  has  free  and 
creative  power  it  is  not  well  to  surrender  too  easily  to 
such  postulates  as  fixed  mechanism  and  rigidity  of 
law,  for  they  are  at  best  but  postulates.  It  cannot  be 
known  whether  nature  has  a  soul  or  whether  she  has 
not.  But  a  poet,  one  thinks,  ought  to  take  advantage  of 
the  doubt  and  give  her  one.  In  a  world  where  a  man  can, 
if  he  chooses,  turn  a  swamp  or  a  bog  into  a  beautiful 
lake  and  transform  its  shores  into  a  loveliness  that  makes 
the  weary  seek  it  for  rest  and  peace,  it  certainly  ought  to 
be  admitted  that  a  poet  can  make  similar  and  far  more 
wonderful  transformations  in  the  art  of  poetry.  No  man 
will  die  for  a  dogma  or  a  postulate.  But  men  must  have 
life,  and  it  is  the  business  of  a  poet  "to  come  that  they 
might  have  life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more  abun- 
dantly,"— passionate,  volitional,  and  imaginative  life.  A 
poet,  in  the  interests  of  this  life,  must  create  it  where  he 
does  not  find  it  and  must  reclaim  the  "waste  places"  of 
existence,  and  make  them,  if  they  do  not  so  naturally, 
breathe  out  the  spirit  of  life  and  the  spirit  of  God. 

We  saw  that  Wordsworth  attempted  to  substitute  ab- 
solute reality  for  the  imagination  so  called,  and  partially 
failed.  He  makes  too  great  claim  for  the  vision  of  ab- 
solute reality  and  does  not  allow  enough  for  the  free  play 
of  fancy.  Tennyson  seems  to  err  on  the  other  side.  He 
does  not  claim  enough  for  the  creative  and  informing 
power  of  the  imagination.     He  permits  it  to  be  tethered 


ART   AND   LAW,  175 

and  heninicd  in  by  scientific  law  and  postulate,  and  escapes 
more  often  into  the  world  of  fancy  than  is  either  necessary 
or  desirable  for  the  highest  art  power  and  art  truth.  He 
is  too  ready  to  admit  that  our  little  systems  have  their 
day  and  cease  to  be,  too  ready  to  admit  that  man 

Knows  himself  no  vision  to  himself 
Nor  the  high  God  a  vision  f 

too  ready  to  admit  that  these  things  are  beyond  the  power 
of  imagination  and  pictorial  art.  Tennyson  never  quite 
bursts  out  in  the  full-orbed  power  of  imaginative  vision. 
Yet  the  deepest  source  of  imaginative  and  creative 
freedom  does  not  lie  mainly  in  the  artist's  treatment  of  the 
external  world,  but  in  his  treatment  of  the  mind  of  man. 
No  poet  of  any  considerable  power,  not  even  Words- 
worth, would  claim  to  be  first  of  all  a  poet  of  external 
nature.  He  would  claim  to  be  a  poet  of  human  nature. 
The  deepest  question  is  not.  How  has  he  treated  external 
nature?  but,  How  has  he  treated  the  mind  of  man, — its 
spiritual  powers,  its  largeness  of  soul,  its  sorrows  and  its 
hopes,  its  fulness  of  life,  its  freedom?  And  Tennyson 
treated  the  human  mind  and  human  character  well.  He 
presented  many  notable  character  studies.  Ulysses,  Tith- 
onus,  Guinevere,  and  a  host  of  others,  speak  absolutely  for 
themselves.  He  said  well  many  things  about  the  varying 
moods  of  man's  temper.  He  portrayed,  with  beauty  and 
power,  many  of  the  aspects  of  his  own  inner  and  deeper 
experiences.  And  he  always  clung  to  the  fact  of  the  in- 
ward greatness  of  the  mind — its  freedom  and  immortal 
power,  power  on  its  own  acts  and  on  the  world. 


'•The  Holy  Grail." 


i 


CHAPTER  IX 

BROWNING   AND   HIS   TIMES. 

Among  English  poets  Browning  is  the  greatest  psy- 
chologist of  human  souls,  not  of  all  kinds  and  types  of 
souls  but  of  those  chiefly  that  are  charged  with  vast  pas- 
sion and  boundless  energy  and  will,  souls  at  bottom  much 
like  the  soul  of  Browning  himself.  How  these  souls 
combined  the  finite  with  the  infinite  in  their  experiences ; 
how  they  "with  the  narrow  mind,  must  cram  inside  their 
finite  God's  infinitude ;"  how  they  aspired  and  attained 
or  how  they  aspired  and  failed ;  how  they  made  their 
choices  in  the  greatest  and  most  serious  crises  of  their 
lives,  when  alternatives  of  vast  importance  presented 
themselves  on  the  instant,  when  a  wrong  choice  was 
fraught  with  the  most  dire  consequences  and  when  the 
right  choice  involved  the  greatest  gain  both  from  the 
world  finite  and  the  world  infinite,  when  there  was  a  clear 
inner  consciousness  of  absolute  freedom  in  making  a 
choice ; — how  these  souls  then  and  thus  made  their  choic- 
es and  exercised  their  wills  is  the  inspiring  theme  of  the 
major  and  more  enduring  part  of  Browning's  poetry. 

With  this  central  idea  as  the  burden  of  his  poetry  it 
will  be  seen  at  once  that  the  scientific  postulates  which 
obtained  generally  in  the  days  of  Browning  and  with 
which  Tennyson  mediated  so  valiantly  all  his  life,  were 
of  little  importance  to  the  mind  of  Browning.  Browning 
did  not  ignore  the  scientific  facts  of  the  age,  but  he  subor- 
dinated the  facts  of  science  to  matters  of  infinitely  greater 


HIS  TiMi;s.  177 

concern  and  made  them  but  a  single  and  unimportant 
stone  in  his  e(Hfice  of  hfe  and  truth.  It  has  already  been 
suggested  that  the  scientific  postulates  of  Browning's  day 
are  but  postulates,  and  as  such  can  be  disposed  of  in  more 
ways  than  one.  Take,  for  instance,  the  postulate  of  law 
based  on  the  idea  of  mechanism  and  see  how  Carlyle  deals 
with  it:  "But  is  it  not  the  deepest  Law  of  Nature  that  she 
be  constant?"  cries  an  illuminated  class:  "Is  not  the 
Machine  of  the  Universe  fixed  to  move  by  unalterable 
rules?"  And  Carlyle's  answer  in  part  is:  "Laplace's  book 
on  the  Stars,  wherein  he  exhibits  that  certain  Planets, 
with  their  Satellites,  g^-rate  round  our  v/orthy  Sun,  at  a 
rate  and  in  a  course,  which,  by  greatest  good  fortune,  he 
and  the  like  of  him  have  succeeded  in  detecting, — is  to  me 
as  precious  as  to  another.  But  is  this  what  thou  namest 
'Mechanism  of  the  Heavens,'  and  'System  of  the  World ;' 
this,  wherein  Sirius  and  the  Pleiades,  and  all  Herschel's 
Fifteen-thousand  Suns  per  minute,  being  left  out,  some 
paltry  handful  of  Moons,  and  inert  Balls  had  been — look- 
ed at,  nicknamed,  and  marked  in  the  Zodiacal  Way-bill ; 
so  that  we  can  now  prate  of  their  Whereabout ;  their  How, 
their  Why,  their  What,  being  hid  from  us.  as  in  the  sign- 
less Inane? 

"S3'Stem  of  Nature!  To  the  wisest  man,  wide  as  is 
his  vision,  Nature  remains  of  quite  infinite  depth,  of 
quite  infinite  expansion;  and  all  Experience  therof  limits 
itself  to  some  few  computed  centuries,  and  measured 
square-miles.  The  course  of  Nature's  phases,  on  this 
our  little  fraction  of  a  Planet,  is  partially  known  to  us: 
but  who  knows  what  deeper  courses  these  depend  on ; 
what  infinitely  larger  Cycle  (of  causes)  our  little  Epi- 
cycle revolves  on?  To  the  Alinnow  every  cranny  and 
pebble,  and  quality  and  accident,  of  its  little  native  Creek 
may  have  become  familiar:  but  does  the  Minnow  under- 


178  BROWNING. 

Stand  the  Ocean  Tides  and  periodic  Currents,  the  Trade- 
winds,  and  Monsoons,  and  Moon's  EcHpses ;  by  all  which 
the  condition  of  its  little  Creek  is  regulated,  and  may, 
from  time  to  time  (f»i-miraculously  enough)  be  quite 
overset  and  reversed  ?  Such  a  Minnow  is  man ;  his  Creek 
this  Planet  Earth;  his  Ocean  the  immeasurable  All;  his 
Monsoons  and  periodic  Currents  the  mysterious  Course 
of  Providence  through  .^ons  of  yEons."^  This  is  the 
characteristic  way  of  Carlyle.  To  one  who  is  anxious  to 
know  whether  the  mechanical  law  which  obviously  ob- 
tains in  the  heavens  is  the  "ultimate  angels'  law,"  Car- 
lyle says  that  it  may  be  the  ultimate  law  or  it  may  not  be. 
He  refers  one  to  the  fact  of  the  "infinite  depth"  and  the 
"infinite  expansion"  of  Nature,  the  "signless  inane," 
the  "immeasurable  All,"  and  the  Mysterious  Course  of 
Providence,"  admonishes  one  to  cease  prating  about 
things  one  cannot  understand,  to  possess  one's  soul  in  si- 
lence, and  above  all  to  wonder  and  to  worship. 

Now  Browning's  way  of  dealing  with  the  "never- 
changing  Law"  of  the  external  universe  is  not  only  pro- 
foundly characteristic  of  Browning  but  shows  him  in  his 
proper  contrast  to  Carlyle  in  one  sense  and  to  Tennyson 
in  another.  With  Browning  this  mechanism  of  the  heavens 
is  not  a  thing  especially  to  wonder  at  as  with  Carlyle,  nor 
yet  a  dead  thing  given  over  to  blind  forces  as  with  Tenny- 
son, but  it  is  a  machinery  to  give  the  soul  its  proper  bent : 

He  [God]  fixed  thee  'mid  this  dance 

Of  plastic  circumstance. 
This  Present,  thou,  forsooth,  would  fain  arrest: 

Machinery  just  meant 

To  give  thy  soul  its  bent. 
Try  thee  and  turn  thee  forth,  sufficiently  impressed.'* 


'  "Sartor  Resartus,"  Bk.  Ill,  Chap.  VIII. 

^"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 

*  See  note  6,  Appendix. 


HIS    TIMES.  179 

"The  starry  state  of  the  broad  skies"  is  but  "needful 
furniture  for  Hfe's  first  stage:" 

What  was  the  world,  the  starry  state 
Of  tlie  broad  skies, — what,  all  displays 
Of  power  and  beauty  intermixed. 
Which  now  thy  soul  is  chained  betwixt, — 
What  else  than  needful  furniture 
For  life's  first  stage  ?^ 

Though  the  meclianism  of  the  heavens  which  is  to 
help  life  in  its  first  stages  can  by  no  means  be  the  "ulti- 
mate angels'  law,"  it  still  serves  another  purpose  besides 
giving  the  soul  its  proper  bent.  It  serves  as  a  screen  to 
ward  ofif  somewhat  the  inundations  of  God's  inflow  of 
power  and  love  and  will  which  would  otherwise  be  too 
great  for  man  to  bear.  Just  as  Moses  of  old  could  not 
see  God  face  to  face  but  must  needs  draw  a  veil  over  his 
face,  so  the  visible  creation  is  meant  to  hide  God's  efful- 
gence sufficiently  for  man  to  remain  alive : 

Naked  belief  in  God,  the  Omnipotent, 
Omniscient,  Omnipresent,  sears  too  much 
The  sense  of  conscious  creatures  to  be  borne. 
It  were  the  seeing  him,  no  flesh  shall  dare. 
Some  think,  Creation's  meant  to  show  him  forth ; 
I  say  it's  meant  to  hide  him  all  it  can.* 

In  our  highest  and  ideal  moments  our  volitional  and 
passionate  natures,  our  instincts  and  intuitions  suddenly 
rising  into  consciousness,  demand  for  their  highest  satis- 
faction a  correspondence  or  communion  with  a  Being 
outside  ourselves,  a  Being  with  a  far  greater  yearning 
to  commune  with  us  than  we  have  to  commune  with  Him, 
a  Being,  in  short,  with  infinite    and  Iwundless  yearning. 


""Easter  Day." 

*  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apology." 


l8o  BROWNING. 

and  with  infinite  and  boundless  energy  of  will.  And  for 
the  satisfaction  of  our  higher  soul  states  Browning  has 
created  the  situation  in  which  there  is  such  a  Being, 
and  then  has  interposed  the  visible  creation  between  that 
Being  and  ourselves  in  order  to  allay  the  ecstasy  of  his 
communing  power  with  us  and  bring  the  communion  it- 
self within  our  ability  to  endure.  This  indeed  is  a  radical 
conception.  It  explains  in  part  why  Browning  has  been 
called  a  barbarian,  why  he  has  been  charged  with  con- 
fusing our  sense  of  reason  and  confounding  the  very 
commonest  of  our  logical  thoughts.  Because  Words- 
worth conceived  the  external  universe  invested  with 
moral  power  and  had  felt  that  power  flow  through  him- 
self and  through  all  things,  he  has  been  charged  with 
building  up  a  factitious  synthesis,  with  subverting  the 
facts  of  everyday  life  into  strange  and  mystic  presences. 
But  Browning  is  more  radical  than  Wordsworth.  Words- 
worth conceived  the  outward  show  of  sky  and  earth  as  a 
good  conductor  through  which  the  moral  power  of  the 
Eternal  Being  might  flow  into  the  heart  of  man.  Brown- 
ing had  the  audacity  to  conceive  this  same  external  ma- 
chinery as  a  bad  conductor,  so  that  the  inflow  of  power 
and  love  should  not  be  overwhelmingly  great  and  de- 
structive. 

In  the  interests  of  volitional  and  passionate  life  we 
have  attempted  to  justify  Wordsworth's  delight  in  the 
"volitions  and  passions  as  manifested  in  the  goings-on 
of  the  universe"  and  his  principle  of  creating  them  where 
he  did  not  find  them.  And  if  one  should  be  asked  why 
not  on  this  same  basis  justify,  if  not  the  greater  origi- 
nality, at  least  the  greater  audacity  of  Browning,  the  an- 
swer must  be:  most  certainly  he  is  to  be  justified.  Was 
it  not  Portia  in  the  "Merchant  of  Venice"  who  felt  the  di- 
lating excess  of  Love  to  such  a  degree  that  she  prayed. 


HIS   TIMES.  iSl 

0  love,  be  moderate;  allay  thy  ecstasy; 

In  measure  rain  thy  joy;  scant  this  excess; 

1  feel  too  much  thy  blessing :  make  it  less, 
For  fear  I  surfeit; — 

and  do  not  all  the  greater  souls  of  great  literature  not  only 
dilate  with  this  intensity  of  passion  and  energy  of  power, 
but  also  make  the  objects  about  them  dilate  with  the 
same  passion  and  power?  Did  not  the  Christ  of  the  He- 
brew Scriptures  come  that  he  might  fill  life  to  overflow- 
ing, and  did  he  not  have  a  constant  vision  of  the  Face  of 
his  Father  shining  through  the  visible  face  of  the  uni- 
verse? And  are  then  the  art  of  Shakespeare  and  the  re- 
ligion of  Christ  false  because  they  contain  these  concep- 
tions? They  are  rather  eternally  true  because  by  these  con- 
ceptions they  rise  to  the  highest  possible  demands  the 
human  heart  can  ever  make  upon  them.  In  fact,  Words- 
worth's theory  about  intuitions,  passions  and  volitions, 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  these  conceptions,  is  a  true  one ; 
and  Browning  is  in  no  idle  sense  the  fulfillment  of  some 
of  Wordsworth's  deepest  prophetic  utterances  concern- 
ing the  future  of  poetry.  This  point  is  so  important  that 
it  will  be  taken  up  later  at  a  different  angle.  It  has  been 
cited  here  merely  to  show  Browning's  artistic  and  relig- 
ious attitude  toward  external  nature  and  toward  the  sci- 
entific spirit  of  his  times. 

Again,  let  us  take  the  idea  of  time  which  so  filled  the 
soul  of  Carlyle  with  wonder  and  so  enamoured  the  imag- 
ination of  Tennyson.  Wordsworth's  and  Tennyson's 
conceptions  of  time  were  very  much  alike.  They  both 
conceived  God  as  transcending  the  order  of  time;  they 
both  thought  that  "our  weakness  somehow  shapes  the 
shadow,  Time,"  and  that  in  our  very  highest  moments  of 
experience  we  can  transcend  it.  But  Tennyson  is  very 
much  more  emphatic  than  Wordsworth  on  the  idea  that 


1 82  BROWNING. 

with  the  Nameless  there  are  no  'Thens'  and  'Whens'  but 
only  an  "Eternal  Now,"  and  he  is  also  far  more  deeply- 
impressed  with  the  mere  immensity  of  time's  range  and 
with  what  may  be  accompHshed  by  the  race  in  time,  even 
though  time  itself  is  shaped  by  our  own  weaknesses.  Now, 
to  Browning  the  idea  that  time  may  possibly  be  a  subject- 
ive phenomenon  is  no  argument  against  its  reality;  it 
cannot  for  that  reason  be  a  mere  shadow.  Nothing  is 
shadowy  that  comes  out  of  the  brain  of  man  because  man 
himself  is  a  creative  soul  and  therein  shows  himself  Hke 
God,  being  only  a  little  lower  in  the  scale.  And  a  single 
moment  of  experience  in  the  soul's  action  may  be  so  infi- 
nitely important  that  the  moment  is  infinity  itself.  Brown- 
ing "crams"  and  "packs"  so  much  of  the  infinite  into  the 
finite  that  there  remains  no  great  difiference  between  the 
two;  the  infinite  is  but  an  extension  of  the  momentous 
finite.  Browning  is  not  impressed  by  the  mere  fact  of  ex- 
tended time  even  though  it  stretch  beyond  any  power  of 
measurement ;  time  is  only  of  interest  so  far  as  it  has  to 
do  with  the  making  of  a  soul. 

Thus,  the  scientific  postulates  of  law  based  on  mech- 
anism, the  mechanical  nature  of  the  external  universe, 
and  the  immensity  of  time,  all  of  which  pressed  Tennyson 
so  hard  in  his  attempt  to  hold  to  a  personal  faith,  were 
completely  subordinated  by  Browning  to  interests  of 
greater  concern  and  became  indeed  only  an  unimportant 
stone  in  his  edifice  of  life  and  truth.  And  the  spirit  of 
the  times  served  Browning  not  so  much  in  giving  him 
new  material  to  work  on  as  in  ofifering  him  a  foil  upon 
which  to  react,  and  then  to  build  independently  his  own 
creative  structure.  Outwardly,  at  least,  this  seems  true. 
In  the  deepest  sense,  however,  it  may  be  that  Browning 
is  far  more  vitally  related  to  the  inner  spirit  of  his  times 
than  even  Tennyson.    The  age  in  which  we  are  living  is 


HIS    TIMES.  183 

as  much  a  scientific  age  as  that  of  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing. We  are  as  of  old  hungering  and  thirsting  for  sci- 
entific facts.  The  laboratories  of  our  universities  are 
resounding  with  the  word  of  fact  more  persistently  than 
ever,  and  hopes  are  still  entertained  to  outdo  Nature  at 
last  and  force  her  to  give  up  her  secrets.  Science,  in  the 
words  of  Browning,  even  now 

Encourages  the  meanest  who  has  racked 
Nature  until  he  gains  from  her  some  fact, 
To  state  what  truth  is  from  his  point  of  view. 
Mere  pin-point  though  it  be.^ 

But  however  vast  the  scientific  edifice  of  the  nineteenth 
and  twentieth  centuries  may  become,  however  brilHant 
may  be  our  discoveries  of  facts  as  a  result  of  both  phys- 
ical and  psychical  research,  it  will  no  doubt  remain  true 
that  the  highest  demands  of  the  soul  shall  not  be  satisfied 
by  anything  found  in  this  edifice  or  in  the  facts  which  go 
into  its  building,  and  that  the  counter  tendency  shall  be 
to  augment  the  soul's  demand  for  "peace,  plenty,  and  pow- 
er"' wiiich  is  so  strongly  expressed  by  the  popular  litera- 
ture of  the  day  that  plumes  itself  as  being  scientific  but 
is  at  heart  transcendental  and  mystical ;  and  that,  as  in  the 
course  of  time  the  limitations  of  scientific  fact  and  scien- 
tific truth  shall  become  more  clearly  demonstrated,  this 
mystical  tendency  which  is  at  present  somewhat  blindly 
stirring  the  common  heart  of  humanity  shall  flow  out 
into  a  broader  sea  than  has  hitherto  been  known  in  the 
history  of  the  world ;  in  which  day  it  shall  be  seen  that  in 
strictly  modern  times  Tennyson,  with  his  insistence  on 
"the  mighty  hopes  that  make  us  men,"  was  the  first  faint 
voice  of  this  spirit,  and  that  Browning,  with  his  insist- 
ence that  the  "ultimate  angels'  law"  is  that  of 


"Francis  Furini,   Parleyings  with." 


l84  BROWNING. 

Indulging  every  instinct  of  the  soul 

There  where  law,  life,  joy,  impulse  are  one  thing — ° 

was  the  first  full-throated  voice  of  that  spirit  and  was 
for  that  reason  the  true  representative  of  the  inner  life 
and  spirit  of  his  time  and  generation.    Who  can  say? 

Since  we  have  now  seen  Browning's  relation  to  the 
spirit  of  his  times,  let  us  consider  briefly  what  were  the 
essential  qualities  of  his  character.  No  one  but  a  critic 
who  supposes  that  Browning  was  first  of  all  a  philoso- 
pher and  that  his  intellectual  casuistry  was  the  most  im- 
portant thing  about  him  would  deny  the  statement  that 
Browning  possessed  the  deepest  of  literary  passion  and 
sensitiveness.  Those  of  us  who  believe  him  to  have  been 
a  poet  first  of  all  believe  him  to  have  possessed  the  poetic 
passion  in  the  highest  degree  accompanied  with  the  ut- 
most richness  in  sensitive  response  to  color  and  sight 
and  all  objects  of  sense.  Take,  for  instance,  a  passage 
(one  out  of  hundreds  of  similar  passages  from  his  poetry) 
from  "The  Last  Ride  Together"  and  see  how  the  poet  ex- 
presses an  intense  inner  passion  joined  with  exquisite 
sensitiveness  to  the  power  and  beauty  and  glory  of  the 
outer  world  of  sense: 

Hush !  if  you  saw  some  western  cloud 
All  billowy-bosomed,   over-bowed 
By  many  benedictions — sun's 
And  moon's  and  evening  star's  at  once — 
And  so,  you,  looking  and  loving  best. 
Conscious  grew,  your  passion  drew 
Cloud,   sunset,   moonrise,   star-shine  too, 
Down  on  you,  near  and  yet  more  near. 
Till  flesh  must  fade  for  heaven  was  here ! — 
Thus  leant  she  and  lingered — joy  and  fear! 
Thus  lay  she  a  moment  on  my  breast. 


"A  Death  in  the  Desert." 


HIS   TIMIiS.  185 

This  is  not  at  all  sensual,  but  richly  sensuous,  and  spir- 
itual. The  passion  is  outspoken  and  powerful.  The  pas- 
sions in  Browning  are  elemental,  exuberant,  and  swelling. 
There  are  not  many  undertones  and  gradations  in  them. 
In  such  a  poem  as  "Love  among  the  Ruins"  the  passion 
runs  in  an  almost  subconscious  undercurrent,  while  the 
lover  is  descanting  on  his  surroundings.  But  in  the 
climax  of  the  poem  the  passion  suddenly  becomes  aware 
of  itself,  and  bursts  out  full-blown,  strong,  too  full  even 
to  speak,  producing  a  powerful  effect : 

When  I  do  come,  she  -will  speak  not,  she  will  stand, 

Either  hand 
On  my  shoulder,  give  her  eyes  the  first  embrace 

Of  my  face, 
Ere  we  rush,  ere  we  extinguish  sight  and  speech 

Each  on  each. 

There  are  no  fine  shadings,  no  secondary  qualities  of  the 
passion  given.  The  passion  is  deeply  impulsive  and  en- 
ergetic, primary  and  fundamental,  and  is  not  worldly- 
wise.  All  this  is  truly  characteristic  of  Browning  in  both 
his  works  and  his  life. 

What  is  true  of  Browning's  passion  is  also  true  of 
his  sense  perceptions,  especially  those  of  color.  He  has 
an  eye  for  primary  colors,  and  especially  those  that  are 
stimulating  to  the  senses — red  and  green,  yellow  and 
blue.  In  "Love  Among  the  Ruins"  the  "domed  and  dar- 
ing palace  shot  its  spires  up  like  fires,"  red  and  gorgeous; 
and  there  never  was  such  plenty  and  perfection  of  green 
grass  elsewliere.  The  girl,  too,  had  "eager  eyes  and  yel- 
low hair" — yellow  like  those  of  Porphyria,  "one  long 
yellow  string"  of  hair.  In  "Home-Thoughts,  from  tlie 
Sea"  the  "simset  ran,  one  glorious  blood-red,  recking  into 
Cadiz  Bay,"  and  Trafalgar  lay  "bluish  'mifl  the  burning 
waters."     In  "De  Gustibus — "  Browning  speaks  of  "the 


l86  BROWNING. 

great  opaque  blue  breadth  of  sea  without  a  break."  A 
rich  profusion  of  colors,  primary  and  massive,  Brown- 
ing gives  in  his  poetry. 

Joined  to  this  predilection  for  the  fundamental  pas- 
sions in  man  and  to  this  sensitiveness  to  primary  colors 
and  sights  in  nature,  there  was  in  Browning  a  quick,  voli- 
tional, muscular  alertness  of  the  eye  that  saw  all  the  sharp 
angles  and  forms  of  every  object  at  once.  In  "Easter 
Day"  he  calls  attention  to  the  "enwrapping  rocky  niche"  in 
which  the  lizard  sleeps ;  in  "By  the  Fireside"  to  the  ferns 
that  "fit  their  teeth  to  the  polished  block"  and  to  the  "fai- 
ry-cupped elf-needled  mat  of  moss;"  and  in  "De  Gustibus 
— "  to  "one  sharp  tree"  that  is  "red-rusted,  rough  iron- 
spiked,"  and  to  a  castle  that  is  "precipice-encurled,  in  a 
gash  of  the  wind-grieved  Apennine."  It  may  be  said 
that  Browning's  infinite  has  very  hard  work  to  get  itself 
realized  in  so  angular  and  sharply  defined  a  finite  as  his. 
Or,  that  his  finite  must  aspire  with  great  aspiration  to- 
ward the  infinite  to  be  absorbed  in  it.  It  may  be  said,  too, 
that  this  keenness  of  sight  for  the  sharp  forms  in  nature 
joined  with  a  certain  nimbleness  of  mind  accounts  in  a 
large  measure  for  Browning's  intellectual  and  analytical 
fame  of  traditional  criticism. 

Browning  was  such  a  veritable  fighter  all  his  days 
that  it  seems  superfluous  to  state  that  he  possessed  an  un- 
usual tenacity  of  will  and  great  moral  and  spiritual  en- 
ergy. The  following  passage  from  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra" 
might  well  serve  as  a  text  for  Browning's  whole  life: 

Then,  ■welcome  each  rdbuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rougli, 

Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  'but  go ! 

Be  our  joys  three-parts  pain ! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain ; 

Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;  dare,  never  grudge  the  throe! 


HIS   TIMES.  187 

And  the  last  thing  he  wrote  proves  that  he  kept  up  his 
victorious  war  cry  to  the  very  end.  There  he  describes 
himself  as 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast 

forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds   would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong 

would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 

No,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man'^.  work-time 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer ! 
Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
"Strive  and  thrive!"  cry  "Speed, — fight  on,  fare  ever 

There  as  here !"' 

And  on  the  first  of  these  stanzas  Browning  himself  com- 
ments: "It  almost  looks  like  bragging  to  say  this,  and 
as  if  I  ought  to  cancel  it;  but  it's  the  simple  truth;  and 
as  it's  true,  it  shall  stand."  And  certainly  no  one  can  wish 
it  canceled  or  doubt  its  utter  sincerity. 

It  is  important  to  note  that  though  Browning  possess- 
ed the  union  of  intense  passion  and  energy  of  will  his 
character  did  not  become  immobile  and  sterile  as  did 
that  of  Wordsworth.  Tlie  first  and  main  reason  for  this 
no  doubt  is  that  Browning,  contrary  to  the  popular  con- 
ception of  him,  was  by  nature,  and  remained  to  the  last 
of  his  days,  genuinely  simple  and  human-hearted.  His 
boundless  enthusiasms,  which  are  so  characteristic  of 
youth — "half  a  pang  and  all  a  rapture,"  "all  a  wonder 
and  a  wild  desire," — his  unmeasured  admiration  for  Shel- 
ley, his  intense  interest  in  and  defense,  both  in  turn  and 
at  the  same  time,  of  such  men  as  diverse  in  their  inter- 


"Epilogue  to  Asolando." 


l88  BROWNING. 

ests  and  views  as  Thomas  Carlyle,  Walter  Savage  L,an- 
dor,  John  Ruskin,  and  John  Stuart  Mill,  his  endless  cu- 
riosity about  all  things  under  the  sun,  his  head-long  de- 
votion to  paints  and  color  and  canvas  in  order  to  learn 
at  first  hand  the  technicalities  of  painting,  his  similar  am- 
ateur devotions  to  sculpture  and  music,  his  helplessness  in 
putting  a  sentence  into  its  straightforward  and  natural 
order  of  English,  his  naive  wonder  at  individuals  who 
seemed  to  have  no  capacity  to  understand  his  poetry,  his 
plunging  into  the  middle  of  a  Renaissance  story  or  Medi- 
eval legend  with  the  expectation  that  the  reader  would  at 
once  understand  all  the  foregone  conclusions — these,  and 
many  more  things  like  them,  give  evidence  that  Brown- 
ing was  at  bottom  always  delightfully  simple  and  human- 
hearted.  In  the  days  of  Wordsworth  there  was  a  strong 
movement  toward  simplicity,  and  Wordsworth  accepted 
the  movement  consciously,  and  consciously  ordered  his 
life  on  the  principle  of  "plain  living  and  high  thinking." 
Besides,  he  attained  childlike  simplicity  only  as  a  result 
of  the  most  important  reactionary  crisis  his  life  had 
ever  known.  The  strenuousness  and  mystic  intensity  of 
it  tended  to  harden  and  solidify  his  character.  He  attain- 
ed to  simplicity  at  the  cost  of  a  certain  aloofness  of  char- 
acter and  arbitrariness  of  decision.  In  later  days  when 
simplicity  had  run  its  course  the  tendency  toward  com- 
plexity and  artificiality  ran  high.  And  upon  this  time 
came  the  militant,  but  simple  and  elemental  soul  of 
Browning.  Accepting  whole-heartedly  the  life  of  all 
classes,  in  the  true  spirit  of  democracy  and  with  the  un- 
dying enthusiasm  of  youth,  Browning  retained  natural- 
ness and  flexibility,  humor  and  whole-heartedness  in  his 
character. 

Another  reason  wh}^  Browning's  intense  passion  and 
energ}'  of  will  did  not  solidify  and  sterilize  his  character 


HIS    TIMES.  189 

was  that  he  possessed  a  genuinely  optimistic  temper. 
Browning's  optimism,  as  all  men's  optimism,  no  doubt 
was  largely  influenced  by  his  temperament.  Chesterton 
says  it  was  wholly  due  to  his  temperament.  In  his  book 
on  Browning  he  says :  "Any  one  will  make  the  deepest 
and  blackest  and  most  incurable  mistake  about  Brown- 
ing who  imagines  that  his  optimism  was  founded  on  any 
argument  for  optimism."  Now  this  is  not  the  deepest 
and  blackest  and  most  incurable  mistake  one  can  make 
about  Browning,  just  as  many  other  things  are  not  super- 
latively deep  and  black  and  incurable  that  Chesterton 
says  are  superlatively  so  in  that  brilliant  though  highly 
colored  work  of  his  on  Browning;  yet  in  this  instance 
there  doubtless  would  be  a  mistake.  But  these  two  things 
in  particular  are  to  be  noted,  first,  that  no  man  ascribes 
his  philosophy  of  optimism  to  the  conditions  of  his  tem- 
permanent,  and  second,  the  number  and  kind  of  unusual 
or  extraordinary  circumstances  that  may  surround  him 
and  the  choices  he  makes  in  his  reactions  on  them  are  im- 
portant and  determining  factors  in  his  optimism.The  great 
crisis  in  Wordsworth's  life  was  his  reactionary  experi- 
ence with  the  French  Revolution.  His  soul  was  plunged 
into  utter  despair  from  the  coils  of  which  he  slowly 
wound  himself,  until  at  last  he  could  speak  with  a  deep 
and  over-flowing  joy  of  the  goodness  of  life.  The  great 
crisis  in  Tennyson's  early  life  was  the  death  of  Arthur 
Hallam.  This  fact  filled  Tennyson's  sensitive  and  imagi- 
native soul  with  agony  and  despair,  from  which  state  of 
mind  he  gradually  escaped  until  he  too  could  speak  with 
assurance  that  human  life  in  the  main  is  good  and  sweet 
and  true.  The  great  crisis  in  Browning's  early  life  was 
his  elopement  and  marriage  with  Elizabeth  Barrett.  And 
though  this  was  accomplished  with  the  most  anxious  and 
serious  experiences  a  man  can  meet,  it  immediately  re- 


19©  BROWNING. 

suited  in  a  long  series  of  the  deepest  and  profoundest 
joys  a  man  can  know.  Thus  from  childhood  to  the  age 
of  forty-nine  Browning's  life  was  a  life  of  continuous 
and  unbroken  joy  and  optimism.  When  Browning  was 
forty-nine  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  died.  But  a  man 
at  forty-nine  will  meet  a  calamity  differently  than  at 
twenty-four.  Though  the  spiritual  changes  wrought  in 
Browning  by  this  calamity  were  great,  his  heart  had  been 
steeled  for  it.  And  it  tended  to  make  him  all  the  more  a 
fighter,  unwilling  to  have  his  eyes  bandaged  by  death,  but 
anxious  to  fight  "the  'best  and  the  last,"  to  "taste  the 
whole  of  it,"  "to  bear  the  brunt"  bravely,  as  he  says  in 
the  immortal  "Prospice."  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson 
each  had  his  happiness  taken  from  him  in  early  manhood 
and  slowly  each  recovered  that  joy  and  unity  of  spirit  that, 
a  great  poet  must  possess  before  he  can  be  the  mouth- 
piece of  a  nation  or  a  race.  Browning  simply  never  had 
that  joy  and  unity  of  spirit  taken  from  him,  and  conse- 
quently was  never  compelled  to  struggle  for  it  strenuous- 
ly, as  were  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson. 

Wordsworth  based  his  optimism  mainly  on  the  power 
of  the  mind  to  reproduce  through  memory  and  will  the 
exalted  moments  of  the  past,  especially  those  of  child- 
hood, and  make  them  live  in  the  present.  Tennyson  bas- 
ed his  optimism  on  the  miracle  of  the  living  will  that  shall 
endure  and  the  orderliness  of  human  life  in  general,  with 
the  faith  that  the  power  of  will  and  freedom  shall  be 
"more  and  more"  in  the  world.  Browning  characteris- 
tically based  his  optimism  on  the  continuous  and  almost 
infinite  energy  of  passion,  on  the  power  of  our  souls  to 
make  their  own  destiny,  and  on  the  fact  of  the  incom- 
pleteness of  life  here  below,  which  latter  point,  we  shall 
see  later,  has  far  reaching  consequences.  Thus,  Brown- 
ing's simplicity  and  human-heartedness,  his  enthusiastic 


HIS    TIMES.  191 

and  optimistic  temper  which  was  in  harmony  with  both 
his  theory  of  optimism  and  his  practical  experiences  of 
Hfe,  tended  to  keep  his  intense  passions  and  energy  of 
will  from  solidifying  and  sterilizing  themselves,  and  made 
it  possible  for  these  latter  forces  to  express  themselves 
in  such  poetry  of  passion  and  energy  and  power  as  falls 
short  only  of  the  poetry  of  the  greatest  masters. 


CHAPTER  X 

BROWNING:  PASSION  AND  WILL. 


On  the  question  of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  which 
is  the  fundamental  question  at  issue  in  these  pages,  the 
attitudes  of  Wordsworth  and  Browning  respectively  are 
very  much  alike  and  stand  in  contrast  to  the  attitude  of 
Tennyson.  Wordsworth  held  that  there  is  a  free  creative 
spirit  in  all  things.  Even  in  the  meadow-flower  and  in 
the  forest-tree  this  principle  of  inner  self-direction  finds 
expression : 

How  does  the  Meadow-flower  its  bloom  unfold? 
Because  the  lovely  little  flower  is  free 
Down  to  its  root,  and,  in  that  freedom,  bold; 
And  so  the  grandeur  of  the  Forest-tree 
Comes  not  by  casting  in  a  formal  mould, 
But  from  its  ozvn  divine  vitality.^ 

And  this  principle  of  universal  freedom  is  in  all  things, 
for  whatever  exists  has  properties  that  spread  beyond 
itself — "this  is  the  freedom  of  the  universe."  But  the 
"most  apparent  home"  of  this  freedom  is  in  the  mind 
of  man,  for  even  in  the  hour  of  defeat  we  are  to  "feel 
that  we  are  greater  than  we  know."  Man  indeed  is  "a 
sensitive  being,  a  creative  soul." 


'"A  Poet!— He  Hath  Put  His  Heart  to  School." 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  193 

Tennyson,  on  the  contrary,  would  say  tliat  the  mead- 
ow-flower is  not  free  down  to  its  root  and  there  is  no  spe- 
cial divine  vitality  in  a  forest-tree.  Much  less  than  in 
an  eagle's  wing  or  an  insect's  eye  can  one  find  the  power 
of  div^inity  in  meadow-flowers  and  forest-trees.  All  these 
products  of  creation  are  given  over  to  blind  forces,  fixed 
and  impersonal  laws.  It  is  a  hard  matter  indeed  to  be  con- 
vinced that  the  will  of  man  himself  is  not  wholly  subject 
to  these  same  blind  and  impersonal  forces.  Tennyson 
concludes,  however,  that  man's  will  is  free  in  a  measure 
and  in  a  progressive  form ;  and,  in  his  efforts  to  deter- 
mine the  limits  of  its  freedom  Tennyson  reasons  on  this 
subject  in  his  verse  more  directly  than  either  Wordsworth 
or  Browning;  that  is,  on  this  subject  he  is  more  nearly  a 
technical  philosopher  than  Wordsworth  or  Browning. 
Wordsworth  is  filled  with  the  spirit  of  child-like  simplic- 
ity; Browning  is  possessed  with  the  eternal  aspirations 
of  youth ;  Tennyson  is  wise. 

As  has  been  suggested,  Browning,  like  Wordsworth, 
without  attempting  to  define  any  limits,  makes  the  as- 
sumption of  freedom  in  man  boldly  and  without  reserve. 
But  there  is  this  difference  in  their  views ;  that  whereas 
Wordsworth  emphasized  the  freedom  that  exists  in  the 
external  universe  along  with  the  freedom  in  man,  Brown- 
ing emphasized  the  freedom  alone  that  exists  in  the  soul. 
For  Browning  there  was  no  great  virtue  in  the  idea  as 
to  whether  there  is  freedom  or  not  in  the  external  uni- 
verse apart  from  the  passions  and  volitions  of  man ;  be- 
cause the  soul,  if  it  acts  decisively  in  the  great  moments 
of  life  that  come  upon  it,  finds  that  this  world  is  pecul- 
iarly fitted  to  its  needs : 

How  the  world  is  made  for  each  of  us ! 
How  all  we  perceive  and  know  in  it 
Tends  to  some  moment's  product  thus 


194  BROWNING. 

When  a  soul  declares  itself — to  wit, 
'By  its  fruit — the  thing  it  does  !* 

The  all-important  and  all-absorbing  thing  in  thi'?  life  is 
what  the  soul  wills  to  do  and  what  it  does ;  and  they  are 
tremendous  powers  that  the  soul  possesses,  and  they  are 
far-reaching  consequences  that  it  produces.  Wordsworth 
indeed  said  that  the  soul  is  free  and  has  creative  power, 
but  Browning  emphasized  this  fact  to  an  unusual  degree. 
For  Browning  man  was  only  a  little  lower  in  the  scale 
than  the  Being  who  made  him — "a  God  though  in  the 
g'  rm."    He  "repeats  God's  process  in  man's  due  degree :" 

Man,  bounded,  j-earning  to  be  free, 
May  so  project  his  surplusage  of  soul 
In  search  of  body,  so  add  self  to  self 
By  owning  what  lay  ownerless  before, — 
So  find,  so  fill  full,  so  appropriate  forms — 
That,  although  nothing  which  had  never  life 
Shall  get  life  from  him,  be,  not  having  been. 
Yet,  something  dead  may  get  to  live  again, 
Something  with  too  much  life  or  not  enough. 
Which,  either  way  imperfect,  ended  once : 
An  end  whereat  man's  impulse  intervenes. 
Makes  new  beginning,  starts  the  dead  alive. 
Completes  the  incomplete  and  saves  the  thing. 
....  Such  man's  feat  is,  in  the  due  degree,  j^ 

Mimic  creation,  galvanism  for  life,  f 

But  still  a  glory  portioned  in  the  scale.^ 

To  repeat  God's  process,  to  resuscitate,  to  regenerate,  to 
add  self  to  self,  to  start  the  dead  alive,  to  mimic  creation, 
to  reclaim  the  waste  places  of  existence  and  to  clothe 
them  with  life  and  vitality — these  are  the  free  and  regal 
powers  of  the  soul.  And  in  the  full  possession  of  our 
god-like'  powers  and  the  gift  of  freedom  we  are  to 


^  "By  the  Fireside." 

'  "The  Ring  and  the  Book."    Bk.  I. 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  I95 

Rejoice  we  are  allied 

To  that  which  doth  provide 

And  not  partake,  effect  and  not  receive  !* 

On  a  question  which  may  be  considered  a  corollary  to 
the  one  just  discussed,  the  question  of  restraint  and  dis- 
cipHne  that  the  will  should  exercise  upon  our  lives,  the 
attitude  of  Browning  stands  in  strong  contrast  to  the  at- 
titudes respectively  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson.  In 
his  persistent  refusal  to  sound  the  tumult  as  well  as  th^ 
depth  of  the  soul,  Wordsworth  gained  somewhat  in  self- 
mastery  and  lost  a  great  deal  in  human-heartedness.  Ten- 
nyson's ideal  was  that  of  a  man  who  could  live  by  the 
'faith  that  comes  of  self-control,"  a  man  "wearing  the 
white  flower  of  a  blameless  life."  Wordsworth  and  Ten- 
nyson both  felt  that  there  were  many  tumultuous  things 
in  our  social  and  private  lives,  in  the  life  of  the  senses, 
in  the  life  of  intellectual  liberalism,  in  the  life  of  spiritual 
indulgence,  upon  which  our  wills  should  exercise  a  stren- 
uous self-control  and  the  power  of  restraint.  Now, 
Browning's  robustious  nature  had  little  in  common  with 
what  he  considered  this  "ghastly  smooth  life,  dead  at 
heart:" 

And  so  I  live,  you  see, 

Go  through  the  world,  try,  prove,  reject. 

Prefer,  still  struggling  to  effect 

My  warfare;  happy  that  I  can 

Be  crossed  and  thwarted  as  a  man. 

Not  left  in  God's  contempt  apart. 

With  ghastly  smooth  life,  dead  at  heart, 

Tame  in  earth's  paddock  as  her  prize." 

This  willingness  to  be  crossed  and  thwarted  as  a  man, 
this  militant  attitude  of  facing  forward  and  moving  for- 

*  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 
"'Easter  Day." 


196  BROWNING. 

ward  is  not  only  to  be  highly  preferred  to  an  easeful  state 
of  lethargy  and  ghastly  smoothness,  but  it  is  to  be  kept  up 
to  the  very  end  and  to  be  carried  forward  by  the  means 
of  seeking  the  hardest  places  and  taking  no  thought  of 
the  risks  and  dangers.  Like  David  the  Shepherd  Boy,  one 
is  to  take  the  hardest  place,  to  refuse  heavy  and  cumber- 
some armament  and  to  depend  on  the  Lord  of  Hosts  for 
victory.     Like  Browning  himself,  one  is  to  be  a    fighter : 

I  was  ever  a  fighter,  so — one  fight  more, 

The  best  and  the  last ! 
I  would  hate  that  death  bandaged  my  eyes,  and  forbore. 

And  bade  me  creep  past. 
No!  let  me  taste  the  whole  of  it,  fare  like  my  peers 

The  heroes   of  old, 
Bear  the  brunt,  in  a  minute  pay  glad  life's  arrears 

Of  pain,  darkness  and  cold.* 

For,  in  thus  boldly  facing  the  worst  in  the  great  crisis, 
defeat  shall  suddenly  be  changed  into  victory,  pain  into 
peace,  darkness  into  light,  and  light  into  love  which  is 
best: 

For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave. 

The  black  minute's  at  end. 
And  the  elements'  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend, 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul !  I  shall  clasp  thee  again. 

And  with  God  be  the  rest!' 

What  though  our  joys  be  three  parts  pain,  it  is  our  busi- 
ness here  to  fight  the  good  fight  with  joy  on  our  lips  and 
gladness  in  our  souls.  And  this  leads  us  directly  to  the 
heart  of  Browning's  experience  with  life  and  his  ideas  of 
passion  and  will. 

*  "Prospice." 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  1 97 

Against  Wordswortli's  and  Tennyson's  ideals  of  self- 
control  and  restraint  Browning  emphasizes  what  may  ])e 
called  the  principle  of  gain.  The  chief  function  of  the  will 
in  Crowning  is  to  exercise  itself  so  as  to  attain  to  the 
greatest  possible  gain.  Let  it  first  be  understood  that 
man  belongs  to  two  kingdoms — the  kingdom  of  heaven 
and  the  kingdom  of  earth, — and  that  as  long  as  he  is  in 
this  life  he  has  no  right  to  renounce  either;  then  the 
cardinal  question  with  regard  to  every  possible  experi- 
ment of  life  is  the  question  of  the  Bishop  in  the  Apolog}^ 
"Where's  the  gain?"  And  the  opposite  question  of  los- 
ing is  hardly  worth  considering.  "Lose?  Talk  of  loss 
and  I  refuse  to  plead  at  all,"  says  one  of  Browning's  char- 
acters, and  this  is  almost  literally  true  of  Browning  him- 
self. His  scheme  of  life  is  a  scheme  of  endless  addition. 
"Let  essence,  whatsoe'er  it  be,  extend — never  contract:" 

I  say  that  man  was  made  to  grow,  not  stop ; 

That  help  he  needed  once,  and  needs  no  more, 

Having  grown  but  an  inch  by,  is  withdrawn : 

For  he  hath  new  needs,  and  new  helps  to  these. 

This  imports  solely,  man  should  mount  on  each 

New  height  in  view ;  the  help  whereby  he  mounts, 

The  ladder-rung  his  foot  has  left,  may  fall. 

Since  all  things  suffer  change  save  God  the  Truth. 

Alan  apprehends  him  newly  at  each  stage 

Whereat  earth's  ladder  drops,  its  service  done; 

And  nothing  shall  prove  twice  what  once  was  proved.' 

Let  man  never  cease  striving,  but  ever  aspire,  and  all 
things  shall  be  his.  And  the  "all  things"  of  Browning 
are  really  inclusive.  "There  shall  never  be  one  lost 
good:" 

What  entered  into  thee. 

That  was,  is,  and  shall  be.' 


'"A  Death  in  the  Desert." 
'"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 


198  BROWNING, 

Is  it  a  question  of  those  immature  instincts  and  aspira- 
tions that  rise  up  in  us  so  beautifully  in  youth  and  tend 
to  die  away  in  the  light  of  later  experiences,  or  of  those 
thoughts  and  escaped  fancies  which  do  not  mature  into 
words  or  substantial  acts?  They  shall  all  help  to  swell 
the  man's  amount  and  count  in  the  final  and  ultimate  es- 
timate of  his  worth  : 

All  instincts  immature, 
All  purposes  unsure, 
That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled  the  man's 
amount : 

Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 

Into  a  narrow  act. 
Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped; 

All  I  could  never  be, 

All,  men  ignored  in  me, 
This,  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher 
shaped." 

Likewise   the   temptations   of   life   exist  but   to   give 
the  soul  a  chance  to  be  triumphant : 

Why  comes  temptation  but  for  man  to  meet 
Aijd  master  and  make  crouch  beneath  his  foot. 
And  so  be  pedestalled  in  triumph?^" 

And  doubts  and  unbelief  are  conditions  that  help  faith  to 
steady  its  nerves  and  stand  calm  in  its  victory : 

Faith  means  perpetual  unbelief 
Kept  quiet  like  the  snake  'neath  Michael's  foot 
Who  stands  calm  just  because  he  feels  it  writhe." 

Similarly  is  it   with   falsehood.     Though   we  are   to 
fight  falsehood  to  the  death  we  are  not  to  make  the  very 


°  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 

'""The  Ring  and  the  Book."     The  Pope. 

"  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apologj'." 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  199 

serious  mistake  of  supposing  that  no  truth  is  mixed  with 
falsehood.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  truth  at  the  center 
and  in  the  heart  of  all  things,  and  falsehood  is  external. 
Falsehood  therefore  must  be  forced  to  yield  up  fact  and 
truth.  And  when  one  penetrates  through  the  shell  of 
falsehood  to  where  truth  lies  and 

Truth,  displayed  i'  the  point,  Hashes  forth  everj'where 
r  the  circle,  manifest  to  soul,  though  hid  from  sense, 
And  no  obstruction  moie  affects  this  confidence, — 
When  faith  is  ripe  for  sight, — whj^  reasonably,  then 
Comes  the  great  clearing  up ; — 

for  truth  then  in  this  great  clearing  up  shall  appear  only 
the  more  radiant  and  heavenly  for  having  been  so  inter- 
mixed with  and  encased  in  falsehood.  An  important 
item  in  Browning's  optimism  is  the  fact  that  he  believed 
that  falsehood  is  an  appearance,  while  truth  is  a  reality, 
and  that  the  former  must  be  of  some  ultimate  service  to 
tlie  latter.  Thus  temptation,  doubt,  and  falsehood  are 
conditional  existences  for  our  souls  to  exercise  themselves 
upon  and  grow  strong;  and  all  our  immature  instincts, 
imsure  purposes,  thoughts  unrealized  in  action,  escaped 
fancies,  all  of  whicli  at  their  best  represent  but  begin- 
nings in  this  life,  are  to  be  added  unto  us  in  the  final  es- 
timate of  our  soul's  worth.  Life  is  thus  an  endless  addi- 
tion, extension,  and  expansion,  and  the  will  is  to  exercise 
itself  not  in  the  way  of  restraint  and  self-control  but  in 
such  a  way  as  to  attain  to  the  greatest  possible  gain ;  not 
negatively  but  positively,  always  positively. 

'"  "Fifine  at  the  Fair." 


200  BROWNING. 


II 


In  this  conception  of  life  no  doubt  the  crucial  prob- 
lem is  the  problem  of  the  indulgence  of  the  senses  and  the 
passions.  Is  it  not  true,  after  all,  that  the  greater  and 
more  substantial  gain  comes  by  means  of  restraint  and 
self-control  rather  than  by  the  way  of  additions,  expan- 
sions, and  free  indulgence?  Browning's  answer  to  this 
question  is  unique  and  forceful,  whatever  else  one  may 
think  of  it.  It  must  be  granted,  first  of  all,  that  sense 
and  passion  are  in  us  for  use,  that  they  are,  in  fact,  the 
chief  powers  in  us  that  give  life  its  significance.  A  man 
is,  for  instance,  to  use  his  eyes  to  see  and  his  ears  to  hear, 
and  a  man  who  has  no  passion  for  home  nor  country,  no 
passion  for  the  traditional  past  nor  the  living  present,  has 
certainly  at  best  but  a  very  low  and  meagre  existence, 
whatever  other  attainments  he  may  have. 

The  real  and  significant  problem  then  is :  What  is  the 
greatest  capacity  to  which  sense  and  passion  can  attain? 
Under  what  conditions  can  the  fullest  capacity  of  the 
senses  be  obtained  without  detrimental  results?  The 
senses  can  attain  to  their  fullest  capacity  when 
the  soul  is  most  energetic  in  spiritualizing  their 
activities.  That  is,  the  senses  are  most  free  to  indulge 
themselves  when  they  are  polarized  by  the  power  of  the 
soul,  for  they  can  then  indulge  themselves  rightly.  The 
eye  can  see  best  physically  when  the  heart  feels  most 
spiritually;  and  also  conversely,  the  heart  can  feel  most 
spiritually  when  the  eye  sees  best  physically.  The  will 
power  of  the  soul  acts  upon  the  body  and  saves  it 
from  destruction.  The  will  power  of  the  body  acts  upon 
the  energies  of  the  soul  and  saves  it  to  the  uses  of  this 
world.   The  greater  capacity  of  the  soul  increases  the  ca- 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  20I 

pacity  of  the  body  and  the  greater  capacity  of  the  body  in- 
creases the  capacity  of  the  soul,  and  by  the  power  of  will 
the  whole  being  faces  forward  and  there  is  constant  ex- 
pansion and  no  need  of  restraint.  The  negations  of  the 
decalogue,  restraint,  are  superseded  by  the  positive  forces 
of  "power,  love,  and  will."  Man  is  to  be  a  thoroughly 
healthy  and  exceedingly  live  animal,  and  a  powerfully 
quickening  spirit  that  aspires  up  to  God.  The  red-blue 
blood  is  to  tingle  through  one's  whole  being  and  dilate  the 
whole  soul : 

Oh,  the  wild  joys  of  living!  the  leaping  from  rock  up 

to  rock, 
The  strong  rending  of  boughs  from  the  fir-tree,  the 

cool  silver  shock 

Of  the   plunge  in   a  pool's  living  water 

How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living!  how  fit  to 

employ- 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the   senses   forever 

in  joy !" 

And  the  soul  on  the  other  hand  is  to  energize  and  spir- 
itualize the  whole  body  of  sense : 

Rejoice  that  man  is  hurled 
From  change  to  change  unceasingly, 
His  soul's  wings  never  furled !" 

The  soul  carries  the  body  from  change  to  change  and 

All  good  things 
Are  ours,  nor  soul  helps  fle?h  more,  now,  than  flesh 
helps  soul  !''■ 

Therefore  man  not  only  "gathers  earth's  whole 
good  into  his  arms,"  but  heaven's  good  also,  for 
if  he  try  to  pack  the  infinite  into  the  finite  he  shall  finally 


"  "Saul." 

""James  Lee's  Wife." 

"  '"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 


20i  BROWNING. 

be  with  God  in  his  heaven,  one  of  the  elect  soldier-saints 

who 

Burn  upward  each  to  his  point  of  bliss — 

Since,  the  end  of  life  being  manifest, 

He  had  burned  his  way  thro'  the  world  to  this.^* 

But  woe  betide  the  soul  that  does  not  keep  the  equi- 
librium of  animal  activities  and  soul  aspirations,  that  re- 
nounces either  earth  or  heaven.  To  the  one  who  re- 
nounces heaven  for  the  mere  beauty  and  power  of  this 
world,  the  terrible  and  stern  decree  is : 

Thou  art  shut 
Out  of  the  heaven  of  spirit ;  glut 
Thy  sense  upon  the  world;  'tis  thine 
Forever — take  it !" 

And  the  one  who  renounces,  while  living  in  this  world, 
the  things  of  sense  and  the  associations  of  this  life  is 
equally  condemned,  as,  for  instance,  Sordello  who,  in  his 
striving  for  infinite  power,  forgot  the  earthly  conditions 
of  this  life  and  became  too  pale  and  feverish  and  ghost- 
like for  this  world  or  the  next : 

And  thus  bereft, 
Sleep  and  forget,  Sordello !  In  effect 
He  sleeps,  the  feverish  poet — I  suspect 
Not  utterly  companionless. 

When  the  senses  and  passions  are  aroused,  flesh  and 
spirit  glorifying  each  other,  and  the  crisis  of  life  is  at 
hand,  the  soul  is  doomed  if  it  does  not  make  its  choice 
according  to  its  highest  impulse,  even  though  at  odds  with 
the  slipshod  and  superficial  conventions  of  society.  This 
is  shown  in  the  poems  "Youth  and  Art"  and  the  "Statue 
and  the  Bust"  and  in  many  another  poem  of  Browning. 


'"  "The  Statue  and  the  Bust." 
"  "Easter  Day." 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  203 

And  tliis  failure  to  will  mightily  and  act  positively  at  the 
bidding  of  both  the  soul  and  the  tlesh  is  really  the  only 
condeninable  act  in  life;  but  it  is  severly  condemnable. 
It  is  an  irredeemable  tragedy,  worse  than  death. 

But  when  one  wills  mightily  and  acts  positively  at 
the  bidding  of  the  soul  and  the  flesh,  one's  wdiole  being 
is  instantly  ennobled,  transformed  in  the  very  act,  en- 
larged and  forever  glorified.  The  action  may,  indeed,  re- 
sult directly  in  tragedy,  but  it  is  still  a  success  with  mis- 
fortune in  this  life  but  with  greater  gain  in  another  life: 

Make  tlie  low  nature  beUer  by  your  throes! 
Give  earth  yourself,  go  up  for  gain  above  !^' 

The  very  heart  of  the  "Ring  and  the  Book"  is  the  fact 
that  Caponsacchi  and  Pompilia  by  choosing  to  follow 
their  higher  impulses  at  the  risk  of  their  lives,  are  there- 
by intsantly  ennobled,  made  spiritually  free,  and  are  for- 
ever justified  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  hear  their  story. 
Browning  exhausts  all  the  powers  of  his  art  to  give 
Guido  and  conventional  society  free  and  full  power  to 
do  their  worst,  and  at  the  same  time  to  show  that  this 
hero  and  heroine  are  not  merely  lifted  above  the  sus- 
picion of  guilt,  but  are.  by  the  very  acts  of  passion  and 
devotion  that  aroused  that  suspicion,  transformed,  en- 
nobled, saved  to  a  higher  life. 

Now,  the  flesh  represents  the  lowest  parts  of  our  ex- 
perience and  the  soul  the  highest  parts.  They  represent 
the  extremes,  the  poles,  of  our  being.  There  is  a  mid-re- 
gion in  our  being  made  up  of  the  prudential,  intellectual 
and  logical  faculties  of  our  natures.  It  is  the  "What 
knows"  in  us,  as  explained  in  "A  Death  in  the  Desert." 
But  Browning,  contrary  to  all  popular  conceptions  of  him, 
scarcely  ever  appeals  to  this  phase  of  our  natures.     He 


""James  Lee's  Wife." 


204  BROWNING. 

irradiates  it  indeed  with  glory  and  light  from  the  power 
of  the  flesh  below  it  and  the  power  of  the  soul  above  it; 
but  he  seldom  appeals  to  it  for  its  own  sake.  "Where 
the  heart  lies,  let  the  brain  lie  also."  And  Browning's 
heart  lies  in  the  regions  of  the  flesh  and  the  soul.  Let  us 
save,  Browning  would  say,  the  remote  ends  of  our  lives  to 
good  and  gainful  purposes,  and  the  mid-region  of  the  in- 
tellect will  take  care  of  itself.  Thus  he  dips  downward  into 
the  primitive  freshness  of  physical  and  bodily  activities 
and  penetrates  upward  into  soul  aspirations  and  soul  ex- 
periences, and  draws  matter  together  into  an  equilibrium 
from  these  two  diverse  sources.  And  the  power  by  which 
this  is  done  may  be  called  the  power  of  will,  or  energy ; 
and  the  tension  produced  in  our  being  by  the  living  power 
of  the  soul  in  the  flesh  and  of  the  flesh  in  the  soul  may  be 
termed,  using  the  word  in  a  broad  sense,  passion.  And 
when  the  will  makes  this  passion  to  expand  itself  and 
face  forward  in  g'athering  the  goods  of  earth  and  heaven 
we  have  the  program  for  life — a  perfectly  simple  and 
comprehensible  program,  which  is  to  produce  constant 
additions  and  gains  to  self  and  to  make  forever  for  more 
abundant  life. 

But  the  conditions  of  a  great  soul  are  that  it  have  high 
passions  compounded  of  sense  and  spirit  and  that  it  have 
the  power  of  willingness  to  press  forward  and  to  take 
the  greatest  risks.  These  obvious  demands  on  the  part 
of  a  great  soul  either  in  literature  or  in  life  seem  to  have 
escaped  the  notice  of  some  critics  who  study  Browning 
ostensibly  for  philosophical  purposes.  In  his  essay  on 
Browning,  entitled  "The  Poetry  of  Barbarism,"  Professor 
Santyana,  in  the  interest  of  what  he  calls  "intelligence" 
and  "contemplation,"  is  sorely  grieved  because  Browning 
draws  the  hero  of  "In  a  Gondola"  as  one  that  has 
enough  passion  and  will  and  energy  to  be  willing  and  even 


PASSION  AND  WILI,.  205 

happy  to  die  for  the  sake  of  love;  and  he  incidentally 
holds  the  poet  up  to  scorn  because  he  makes  another  char- 
acter in  another  drama,  in  explaining  to  his  mistress  the 
motive  of  his  faithful  services  as  a  minister  of  the  queen, 
say: 

She  thinks  there  was  more  cause 

In  love  of  power,  high  fame,  pure  loyalty? 

Perhaps  she  fancies  men  wear  out  their  lives 

Chasing  such  shades 

I  worked  because  I  want  you  with  my  soul." 

Our  critic  admits  that  Browning  never  allows  the  passion 
to  sink  into  sensuality  and  that  in  his  hands  it  always  re- 
mains passion.  What  offends  him  in  particular  is  that 
/le  passion  does  not  rise  into  contemplation  ana  mat  the 
hero  of  "In  a  Gondola"  is  not  intelligent  enough  to 
know  that  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  die. 
"But  had  that  hero  known  how  to  love  better  and  had  he 
had  enough  spirit  to  dominate  his  love,  he  might  perhaps 
have  been  able  to  carry  away  the  better  part  of  it  and  to 
say  that  he  could  not  die."  This  demand  on  the  part  of  our 
critic  for  prudence  and  rationality  in  the  passion  of  love, 
the  demand  that  lovers  in  tragic  drama  turn  philosophers, 
is  rather  exasperating,  to  say  the  least.  One  might  as 
well  expect  a  soldier  in  the  midst  of  battle  suddenly  to 
leave  his  post  as  he  bethought  himself  on  the  fundamental 
truth  that  peace  is  better  than  war.  One  might  as  well  ex- 
pect Othello  to  sue  for  divorce  and  obtain  an  honorable  re- 
lease from  wedlock.  Could  not  Othello  have  foreseen  that 
his  decision  to  kill  Desdcmona  would  involve  his  own 
ruin  and  destruction,  granting  even  that  the  representa- 
tions of  lago  were  absolutely  true?  We  might  say,  then, 
with  our  critic  that  had  Othello  only  "had  enough  spirit 


"Tn  a  Balcony." 


206  BROWNING. 

to  dominate  his  love  he  might  perhaps  have  been  able 
to  carry  away  the  better  part  of  it  and  to  say  that  he  could 
not  die."  And  one  wonders  what  our  critic  really  means 
by  insisting  that  the  poet  should  have  thrust  prudence, 
rationalization,  and  contemplation  into  the  tragic  scene 
of  "In  a  Gondola."  Characters  like  Othello  and  this 
hero  of  Browning  take  no  thought  of  death.  They  hold 
their  own  lives  at  a  penny-worth  price.  They  are  tilled 
with  high  passion,  breaking  the  barriers  of  common  pru- 
dence, and  with  the  energy  of  will  daring  the  utmost  and 
taking  the  greatest  risks. 

A  poet  who  would  treat  such  characters  successfully 
must  not  be  measured  by  rule  of  thumb.  He  must  be 
granted  liberties.  It  is  the  prerogative  of  the  great  to 
take  liberties,  if  they  only  take  them  in  a  great  way. 
Shakespeare  took  liberties,  and  for  many  generations  he 
was  accounted  a  barbarian,  especially  by  those  of  the  pru- 
dential and  philosophical  type.  They  considered  his  po- 
etry the  "fruit  of  the  imagination  of  an  intoxicated  sav- 
age." But  in  the  course  of  time  it  dawned  on  them  that 
Shakespeare  took  his  liberties  in  a  great  way,  and  he  was 
thenceforth  considered  a  genius  and  a  gentleman  instead 
of  a  barbarian.  It  ought  to  begin  to  dawn  upon  the  minds 
of  men,  one  thinks,  that  Browning  took  his  liberties  in 
a  great  way  and  that  he  too  is  a  genius  an  J  a  gentleman 
instead  of  a  barbarian. 

Again,  a  great  poet  bids  fair  to  be  immortal, — that  is, 
to  be  read  and  known  for  all  time.  But  to  reach  nil 
races  and  all  times  he  must  touch  the  springs  of  being 
that  have  their  sources  deep  in  our  primal  natures,  t'^e 
central  and  permanent  qualities  of  man,  the  passion,  for 
instance,  of  love  in  its  original  and  primitive  strength. 
And  Browning  has  indeed  done  well  to  strike  deep  into 
our  primitive  natures,  to  give  us  characters  that  dare  to 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  207 

love  in  the  old-fashioned  'way,  that  dare  to  die  for  love 
if  need  be,  and  that  sing  their  experience  in  impassioned 
verse,  as  does  the  hero  of  "In  a  Gondola." 

There  is  also  a  criticism  to  the  effect  that  Browning's 
passionate  and  strenuous  characters  have  no  deep  sense 
of  self-denial,  of  renunciation,  and  of  dependence  on  a 
Higher  Being,  and  that  Browning  himself  mistakes  self- 
indulgence  for  self-realization.  There  may  be  some  truth 
in  this  contention,  but  the  point  has  been  over-empha- 
sized. For  the  principle  of  expansion,  as  Browning  uses 
it,  works  in  two  directions.  The  more  one  wills  to  do  the 
more  one  is  aware  of  and  feels  dependent  on  a  power  out- 
side himself.  The  old  man  in  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra"  strives 
and  learns  and  dares,  welcomes  the  rebuffs  of  life,  re- 
joices he  is  allied  to  that  which  doth  provide  and  not  par- 
take, starts  out  once  more  on  adventures  brave  and  new, 
and  is  not  afraid.  Yet  this  man  most  deeply  feels  that 
our  times  are  in  God's  hand,  that  amid  the  changes  of 
this  earth  his  own  "soul  and  God  stand  sure,"  that  he  is 
in  constant  need  of  an  infinite  power: 

But  I  need,  now  as  then, 
Thee,  God,  who  mouldest  men. 

However  strenuous  Browning's  characters  may  be,  they 
are  almost  universally  deeply  religious  in  the  sense  of 
being  dependent  upon  powers  vastly  greater  than  them- 
selves. 

And  from  this  standpoint  again.  Browning  is  justified 
in  his  attitude  toward  external  nature  and  the  forces  out- 
side himself.  For  when  a  character  feels  rising  up  from 
within  a  well-spring  of  passionate  and  volitional  life  he 
will  ascribe  some  of  this  life  to  the  external  universe,  and 
the  source  of  it  to  a  Life  outside  himself  that  is  greater 
than  he.    And  this  Life  may  be  literally  and  verily  there. 


208  BROWNING. 

Thus,  in  the  poem,  "Saul,"  David,  rushing  out  into  the 
darkness  after  the  great  moment  in  which  he  aroused 
King  Saul  from  his  lethargy  and  proclaimed  the  new  law 
of  Love,  felt  that  the  whole  universe  was  beating  with 
emotion  in  harmony  with  his  own ;  and  that  there  was 
a  power  outside  himself  that  was  aiding  him : 

I  know  not  too  well  how  I  found  my  way  home  in 

the  night. 
There  were  witnesses,  cohorts  about  me,  to  left  and 

to  right, 
Angels,  powers,  the  unuttered,  unseen,  the  alive,  the 

aware : 
I  repressed,  I  got  through  them  as  hardly,  as  strug- 

glingly  there, 
As    a    runner   beset   by    the   populace    famished    for 
;  news — 

Life  or  death.     The  whole  earth  was  awakened,  hell 

loosed  with  her  crews; 
And  the  stars  of  night  beat  with  emotion,  and  tingled 

and  shot 
Out  in  fire  the  strong  pain  of  pent  knowledge:  'but 

I  fainted  not. 
For  the  Hand  still  impelled  me  at  once  and  support- 
ed, suppressed 
All  the  tumult,  and  quenched  it  with  quiet,  and  holy 

behest, 
Till  the  rapture  was  shut  in  itself,  and  the  earth  sank 
to  rest. 
The  external  universe  may  be  as  mechanical  and  imper- 
sonal as  Tennyson  said  it  was,  but  when  life  and  love  and 
passion  and  power  are  in  the  heart  and  are  "by  the  pain- 
throb,  triumphantly  winning  intensified  bliss,"   then  the 
external  universe  itself  becomes  pliable  and  plastic  and 

God  is  seen  God 
In  the  star,  in  the  stone,  in  the  flesh,  in  the  soul  and 
the  clod."" 

"  "Saul." 


PASSION  AND  WILL.  209 

Some  critics  have  said  that  Browning  rarely  attributes 
emotions  to  the  stars  and  makes  God  commingle  with  the 
activities  of  the  external  universe  itself,  and  that  gener- 
ally he  speaks  of  the  external  universe  as  existing  inde- 
pendently. But  the  essential  point  here  to  seize  is  that, 
whether  the  external  universe  be  conceived  as  a  piece  of 
machinery  to  give  the  soul  its  bent,  or  as  a  screen  which 
is  to  hide  God's  effluence  from  us  somewhat,  or  as  being 
such  a  piece  of  machinery  or  screen,  the  spirit 
of  God  shines  through  it  and  seems  to  commin- 
gle with  it, — whatever  way  it  be  conceived,  the 
point  to  seize  is  that  David's  moment  of  expe- 
rience in  this  poem  of  "Saul"  was  an  exceptional 
one  and  that  to  Browning  the  external  universe  itself 
is  never  a  fixed  thing  but  something  flexible  and  plastic 
to  the  influence  of  conscious  beings — God  and  man. 

The  external  universe  may  indeed  be  conceived  as  the 
habit  of  God  in  reflex  and  mechanical  action.  There  is 
ordinarily  not  much  consciousness  of  any  sort  in  it,  but 
God  can  renew  his  consciousness  in  it  at  will.  Just  as  a 
man  may  keep  throwing  a  ball  in  a  purely  reflexive  and 
unconscious  manner  and  as  he  may,  on  the  other  hand, 
become  thoroughly  alive  in  mind  and  body  in  the  throwing 
of  the  ball,  so  God  who  usually  represents  the  mechanic. 
cal  side  of  his  acts  in  the  external  universe  may  in  favor- 
able moments  renew  his  ancient  rapture  and  intenser  life 

the  lark 
Soars  up  and  up,  shivering  for  very  joy; 
Afar  the  ocean  sleeps;  white  fishing-gulls 
Flit  where  the  strand  is  purple  with  its  tribe 
Of  nested  limpets;  savage  creatures   seek 
Their  loves  in  wood  and  plain — and  God  renews 
His  ancient  rapture."' 


"  "Paracelsus." 


2IO  BROWNING. 

Likewise  in  "By  the  Fireside"  the  powers  were  at  play 
in  the  forests  at  the  propitious  moment  and  mingled  two 
souls  together: 

The   forests  had  done   it ;   there   they  stood ; 
We  caught  for  a  moment  the  powers  at  play ; 
They  had  mingled  us  so,  for  once  and  good, 
Their  work  was  done — we  might  go  or  stay, 
They  relapsed  to  their  ancient  mood. 

And  man  in  his  higher  moments  can  also  renew  his  own 
raptures  on  the  hither  side  of  the  external  universe.  In 
fact,  it  is  man  and  not  the  outward  and  visible  world  that 
God  himself  is  primarily  interested  in,  and  it  is  God  and 
not  his  outward  works  that  man  is  primarily  interested 
in;  and  when  man's  own  deeds  glorify  himself,  as  in 
David's  case,  his  own  face  shines  through  to  God  and 
God's  face  shines  through  to  him,  and  the  world  between 
becomes  an  iridescent  medium.  The  outer  world, 
moreover,  always  receives  its  significance  from 
the  fact  that  God's  face  shines  from  behind  it  and 
through  it,  that  the  life  in  the  world  seems  to  be  walled 
about  with  disgrace  until  God's  smile  is  seen  shining 
through  a  human  face : 

Such  a  starved  bank  of  moss 
Till,  that  May-morn, 
Blue  ran  the  flash  across: 
'Violets  were  born ! 

Sky — what  a  scowl  of  cloud 
Till,  near  and   far, 
Ray  on  ray  split  the  shroud : 
Splendid,   a   star ! 

World — how  it  walled  about 
Life  with  disgrace 
Till  God's  own  smile  came  out: 
That  w^as  thy  face !'" 


"The  Two  Poets  of  Croisic." 


CHAPTER  XI 


BROWNING:  FREEDOM  AND  TRANSCENDENT- 
ALISM. 


We  have  now  seen  that  Browning  laid  great  stress 
on  the  power  of  free  choice  in  the  soul,  the  self-directing, 
creative,  and  expansive  power  of  it ;  that  he  held  that 
if  a  man  can  only  take  the  right  attitude  toward  life, 
in  which  all  the  activities  of  body  and  mind  and  soul  are 
employed,  there  need  be  no  restraint  laid  on  these  ac- 
tivities ;  and  that  by  the  principle  of  gain  life  may  be  made 
a  process  of  constant  growth,  addition,  and  expansion. 
But  a  deeper  and  more  fundamental  principle  than  any  of 
these — a  principle  closely  bound  up  with  these  in  their 
practical  working,  a  principle  which  finds  the  fullest  and 
most  frequent  statement  everywhere  in  Browning's  po- 
etry,— is  the  principle  of  tiie  incompleteness  of  the  world 
and  the  imperfections  of  man.  It  is  the  purpose  here  in 
particular  to  point  out.  wliat  seems  never  to  have  been 
clearly  pointed  out  before,  the  relation  this  principle  has 
to  tlie  principle  of  the  freedom  of  the  will.  Why  does 
Browning  everywhere  in  his  poetry  never  tire  of  inveigh- 
ing against  the  '"finished  and  finite  clods,  untroubled  by 
a  spark,"  and  of  constantly  insisting  on  the  facts  that  "a 
man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp"  and  that  on   the 


212  BROWNING. 

earth  are  "the  broken  arcs,"  if  it  is  not  that,  outside 
of  the  suggestions  of  immortahty  which  they  contain, 
they  suggest  that  this  universe  is  not  a  block  universe 
and  its  system  not  a  closed  system;  that  this  world  is  not 
so  absolutely  fixed  and  predestined  in  its  existence  as  it 
has  heretofore  seemed,  but  is  hung  together  more  or  less 
loosely  with  many  possiblities  of  improvement,  and  that 
man  with  his  power  to  repeat  "God's  process  in  man's 
due  degree"  and  with  his  resuscitating  and  creating  pow- 
ers is  a  co-partner  with  God  and  is  mightily  responsible 
for  the  future  wellbeing  and  final  winding  up  of  the 
world  ? 

In  his  remarkable  book  on  "Pragmatism,"  Professor 
William  James  says:  "Suppose  that  the  world's  author 
put  the  case  to  you  before  creation,  saying:  'I  am  going 
to  make  a  world  not  certain  to  be  saved,  a  world  the  per- 
fection of  which  shall  be  conditional  merely,  the  condi- 
tion being  that  each  several  agent  does  its  own  "level 
best."  I  offer  you  the  chance  of  taking  part  in  such  a 
world.  It's  safety,  you  see,  is  unwarranted.  It  is  a  real 
adventure,  with  real  danger,  yet  it  may  win  through.  It 
is  a  social  scheme  of  co-operative  work  genuinely  to  be 
done.  Will  you  join  the  procession?  Will  you  trust 
yourself  and  trust  the  other  agents  enough  to  face  the 

risk?' There  is  a  healthy-minded  buoyancy  in  most 

of  us  which  such  a  universe  would  exacly  fit.    We  would 

therefore  accept  the  offer It  would  be  just  like 

the  world  we  practically  live  in ;  and  loyalty  to  our  old 
nurse  Nature  would  forbid  us  to  say  no.  The  world 
proposed  would  seem  'rational'  to  us  in  the  most  living 
way."  Had  Professor  James  had  Browning's  conception 
of  a  rational  world  in  mind  he  could  not  have  described 
that  conception  more  accurately,  for  Browning  believed 
that  the  world  we  live  in  is  just  such  an  unfinished  and  im- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  213 

perfect  world  as  Professor  James  describes,  a  world 
hanging  in  tiie  balance  and  depending  for  its  salvation 
on  whether  men  will  do  their  'level  best'  in  pulling  it 
through.  Even  the  external  world  of  nature  is  full  of 
these  imperfections  and  gross  misfits.  When  Childe 
Roland  turned  aside  into  that  ominous  tract  which  hides 
the  Dark  Tower  he  found 

Now  blotches  rankling,  colored  gay  and  grim, 
Now  patches  where  some  leanness  of  the  soil's 
Broke  into  moss  or  substances  like  boils ; 
Then  came  some  palsied  oak,  a  cleft  in  him 
Like  a  distorted  mouth  that  splits  its  rim 
Gaping  at  death,  and  dies  while  it  recoils. 

But  in  spite  of  the  grotesque  and  terrifying  objects  that 
lay  in  this  ominous  tract  Childe  Roland  did  his  'level  best' 
to  find  the  Tower.  He  found  it,  and  blew  his  slug-horn 
as  a  token  of  his  victory.  Similar  misfits,  incongruities, 
and  improbabilities  exist  in  the  essence  of  a  man's  relig- 
ious faith: 

So,   I   would   rest  content 
With   a  mere  probability, 
But,  probable;  the  chance  must  lie 
Clear  on  one  side, — lie  all  in  rough, 
So  long  as  there  be  just  enough 
To  pin  my  faith  to,  though  it  hap 
Only  at  points :  from  gap  to  gap 
One  hangs  up  a  huge  curtain  so, 
Grandly,  nor  seeks  to  have  it  go 
Foldless  and  flat  along  the  wall. 
What  care  I  if  some  interval 
Of  life  less  plainly  may  depend 
On  God?  I'd  hang  there  to  the  end.* 

All  the  way  in  life  from  the  blotches  and  patches  of 
the  scrubby   things  of  external  nature  to   the   wrinkled 

*  "Easter  Day." 


214  BROWNING. 

folds  in  one's  religious  faith  there  is  much  that  is  incon- 
gruous, imperfect,  and  unfinished.  To  enforce  an  in- 
stance from  the  passage  just  quoted,  our  faith  is  vital 
only  in  spots ;  in  other  spots  it  is  quite  dry  and  arid.  Some 
parts  of  our  experience  seem  to  depend  directly  on  God; 
others  only  probably.  Only  so  much  of  our  faith  as  has 
been  made  vital  is  really  worth  while.  And  it  is  made 
vital  by  what  the  soul  does,  for  the  "soul  declares  itself 
by  "the  thing  it  does."  Browning's  realism  is  well  shown 
here.  He  will  call  the  dead  parts  of  faith  dead  and  not 
live,  even  at  the  risk  of  making  the  whole  of  it  look  scrap- 
py and  incomplete.  And  when  the  dry  husks  of  faith 
are  thus  shorn  away  by  this  insistent  realism,  then  there  is 
really  free  play.  Then  the  soul  can  go  on  vitalizing  it- 
self by  its  acts ;  it  can  increase  the  vitality  of  those  parts 
of  its  faith  that  are  already  vital ;  it  can  then  grow  and  di- 
late and  expand,  as  Browning  said  that  it  can.  Professor 
James  again  has  a  passage  to  this  same  effect:  "our  acts, 
our  turning  places,  where  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  make 
ourselves  and  grow,  are  the  parts  of  the  world  to  which 
we  are  the  closest,  the  parts  of  which  our  knowledge  is 
the  most  intimate  and  complete.  Why  should  we  not 
take  them  at  their  face-value?  Why  may  they  not  be  the 
actual  turning-places  and  growing  places  which  they  seem 
to  be,  of  the  world — why  not  the  workshop  of  being, 
where  we  catch  fact  in  the  making,  so  that  nowhere  may 
the  world  grow  in  any  other  kind  of  way  than  this?"  The 
conditions  are  that  the  world  be  imperfect  and  unfinished, 
full  of  open  gaps  and  wrinkled  folds,  that  man  be  a  co- 
partner with  God  in  straightening  it  out  and  moving  it 
forward,  that  he  be  really  in  "the  workshop  of  being, 
where  we  catch  fact  in  the  making,"  that  he  mimic  cre- 
ation and  add  self  to  self  as  Browning  says;  then  there  is 
something  like  genuine  freedom  in  this  life,  for  man's 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  2l5 

acts  have  power  to  vitalize  and  expand  life  and  truth; 
and  they  add  something  to  the  sum  total  of  existence. 
This  is  bracing,  indeed. 

In  fact  the  world  can  easily  be  conceived  as  being 
too  nearly  fixed  in  its  state,  based  on  too  exact  laws,  like 
the  laws  of  geometry,  to  permit  any  free  play  in  its  sev- 
eral parts,  and  to  encroach  on  real  freedom.  In  the  poem 
"Easter  Day"  an  imaginary  speaker  is  made  to  say : 

I  would  fain 
'Conceive   of   the   Creator's   reign 
As  based  upon   exacter  laws 
Than  creatures  build  by  with  applause. 
In  all  God's  acts — (as  Plato  cries 
He  doth) — he  should  geometrize. 

"I  see,"  interrupts  the  poet  himself  at  this  point: 

You  would  grow  as  a  natural  tree, 
Stand  as  a  rock,  soar  up  like  fire. 
The  world  is  so  perfect  and  entire, 
Quite  above  faith,  so  right  and  fit ! 
Go  there,  walk  up  and  down  in  it ! 
No. 

Indeed  no !  Browning  does  not  choose  to  walk  up  and 
down  in  so  smug  and  perfect  and  finished  a  little  world 
where  everything  occurs  with  geometrical  precision  and 
exactness.  For  what  is  a  man  more  than  a  tree  or  a  rock 
if  the  universe  executes  itself  in  him  with  the  same  pre- 
ciseness  and  mechanical  exactness  as  't  seems  to  do  in 
these  objects  ?  If  man  have  the  power  to  aspire  upward  to 
heaven  and  to  wish  to  escape  the  gulf  of  "infernal  laugh- 
ter," 

Shall  Man,  such  step  within  his  endeavor, 

Man's  face,  have  no  more  play  and  action 

Than  joy  which  is  crystallized  forever, 

Or  grief,  an  eternal  petrifaction?' 


"  "Old  Pictures  in  Florence." 


2l6  BROWNING. 

A  world  of  geometrical  precision,  of  crystallized  joy,  and 
of  petrified  grief  is  not  the  world  to  be  chosen  to  walk  in. 
Yet  to  walk  in  a  world  opposite  from  this  is  not  easy 
but  very  difficult.  It  was  not  ease,  however,  that  Brown- 
ing was  seeking;  it  was  freedom.  And  it  is  hard  to  live 
in  a  world  not  perfect  nor  entire,  in  a  world  of  uncertain- 
ties, dangers  and  risks.  "It  is  hard,"  as  Browning  says, 
"to  be  a  Christian."  One  must  be  willing  to  pay  the  price 
that  freedom  demands.  It  is  hard,  however,  to  see  just 
what  the  price  is,  and  how  freedom  can  be  obtained  at  all. 
In  this  same  poem  of  "Easter  Day"  Browning  puts  the 
difficulty  point  blank : 

And  certainly  you  name  the  point 

Whereon  all  turns:  for  could  you  joint 

This  flexile  finite  life  once  tight 

Into  the  fixed  and  infinite, 

You,  safe  inside,  would  spurn  what's  out, 

With  carelessness  enough,  no  doubt — 

Would  spurn  mere  life :  but  when  time  brings 

To  their  next  stage  your  reasonings, 

Your  eyes,  late  wide,  begin  to  wink 

Nor  see  the  path  so  well,  I  think. 

How  this  flexible  and  finite  world  can  fit  tightly  into  the 
fixed  and  finished — this  is  the  central  and  crucial  problem 
and  does  indeed  make  one's  eyes  wink  and  fail  to  see  the 
path  clearly. 

And  thus  we  come  full  circle  to  the  problem  toward 
which  the  discussion  on  Tennyson  gravitated.  Tennyson 
said  that  a  large  part  of  this  universe  of  existence,  say 
three-fourths  of  it,  is  in  a  state  of  permanence  and  fixed- 
ness. The  other  fourth,  which  is  the  all-important  mar- 
gin— the  inner  life  of  man — is  free,  based  on  the  principle 
of  miracle.  This  was  Tennyson's  explanation  of  man's 
freedom  and  his  mediation  between  fact  and  faith.     But 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  217 

Browning  struck  a  far  deeper  blow  for  liberty.  In  his 
opposition  to  scientific  materialism  and  fixedness  in  gen- 
eral, Browning,  roused  like  a  lion  in  his  lair,  came  for- 
ward to  assert  with  all  the  strength  that  was  in  him  that 
man  in  his  highest  moments  becomes  aware  that  all  the 
postulates  of  geometrical  fixedness  and  determinism  can 
be  made  pliable  and  plastic,  that  the  whole  world  is  mal- 
leable as  though  it  were  just  in  the  process  of  making, 
that  man  who  is  a  "God  though  in  the  germ"  has  no  mean 
but  a  free  and  independent  part  in  making  it ;  and  that 
the  imperfections  in  man  and  the  gaps  and  terrible  misfits 
in  the  external  world  which  produce  groanings  unutter- 
able, the  incompleteness  without  and  within  man,  prove 
positively  that  he  has  plenty  of  free  play  for  the  exercise 
of  his  god-like  gifts,  and  that  the  soul  has  a  vast  deal  to 
accomplish  here  below.  The  shortcomings,  then,  of  this 
life  and  of  this  world  are  not  fatal  things  in  themselves 
but  are  the  one  means  of  offering  a  great  possiblity  to 
man — the  possibility  of  endless  improvement  on  them  and 
saving  them  to  higher  things.  There  is,  of  course,  an  in- 
grained tendency  in  us  to  sink  in  the  scale — to  become 
"finished  and  finite  clods,  untroubled  by  a  spark."  But 
this  is  death  to  the  soul.  Dauntless  courage  and  high 
emprise  alone  can  save  us  from  that.  j\Ian  must  accept 
this  life  strenuously  and  robustiously.  He  must  be  willing 
and  anxious  to  take  great  risks  and  to  bear  the  suspense 
of  uncertainties.  \'ast  alternatives  lie  before  him.  It  re- 
quires the  energy  of  will  to  attain  the  higher  alternative: 

Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 

For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will  I' 

In  this  direction  lies  salvation. and, without  being  a  Brown- 
ingite,  one  may  well  ask,  what  other  way  is  there?    And 


"The  Statue  and  the  Bust." 


2l8  BROWNING. 

when  a  soul  has  chosen  the  better  part  and  contended  to 
the  uttermost,  it  is  secure  against  all  powers  whatsoever, 
because  for  it  forever 

God's  in  his  heaven — 
All's  right  with  the  world  !* 

Broadly  speaking,  the  difference  in  spirit  between 
ancient  civilization  in  general  and  Greek  civilization  in 
particular  on  the  one  hand,  and  modern  civilization  on 
the  other,  is  that  whereas  the  ancients  had  a  keen  sense 
of  Nemesis,  of  an  inexorable  fate,  of  determinism,  of 
fatalism  running  through  all  things,  men  of  modern  civi- 
lization have  a  keen  sense  of  free-will  and  freedom,  the 
sense  that  truth  rises  from  within  and  that  the  soul  is 
master  of  its  own  fate.  In  the  scientific  movement,  how- 
ever, of  the  nineteenth  century  and  of  the  present,  with 
its  endless  classifications  and  tabulations,  with  its  minute 
analytical  processes,  with  its  vast  increase  of  geometrical 
exactness  and  completeness,  there  has  been  a  strong  ten- 
dency to  emphasize  the  spirit  of  fatalism  of  the  ancients ; 
yet  the  counter-tendency  toward  freedom  has  been  and  is 
a  growing  tendency.  Out  of  all  the  fatalistic  philoso- 
phies of  the  ancients,  out  of  the  very  heart  of  ancient  civ- 
ilization there  rose  one  figure,  stalwart,  vast,  colossal,  su- 
perhuman in  its  dimensions,  that  cried  the  deepest  cry 
of  the  human  scul  and  expressed  its  deepest  need: 
"What  shall  it  profit  a  man,  if  he  shall  giin  the  whole 
world,  and  lose  his  own  soul?"'  and  ''JVJ.owcvcr  zciJl  shall 
drink  of  the  water  of  life  freely,"  declaring  once  for  all 
the  soul's  worth  an  J  asserting  its  supreme  power  of  mak- 
ing its  own  free  choice.  Out  of  the  heart  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  civilization  there  rose  a  figure,  stalwart  and 

*  "Pippa  Passes." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  219 

vast,  that  struck  ringing  blows  for  the  soul's  worth  and 
the  soul's  freedom  on  the  new  and  modern  basis  of  the 
world's  incompleteness  and  man's  imperfections.  .\nd 
perhaps  since  the  days  of  Christ  there  has  been  no  one 
who  has  more  persistently  and  dauntlessly  asserted  the 
energ}'  and  power  and  freedom  and  central  importance  of 
the  soul  of  man  than  has  Robert  Browning. 

Having  this  deep  affinity  with  the  religion  of  Christ 
It  is  but  natural  that  Browning  should  have  directly  ac- 
cepted the  person  of  Christ  in  his  personal  religion  and 
should  have  made  one  of  his  characters  in  a  poem  say 
to  another: 

'Tis  the   weakness  in   strength,   that  I   cry  for !   mj^ 

flesh,  that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead!  I  seek  and  I  land  it.    O  Saul,  it  shall 

be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee ;  a  Man  like 

to  me, 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,   forever :  a  Hand 

like   this   hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee!  See 

the  Christ  stand.* 

And  that  he  should  have  in  his  own  person  spoken  of 
the  Face  of  Christ  that  grows  upon  one  rather  than  van- 
ishes, of 

That  one  Face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 

Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 

Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows !' 


'  "Saul." 

'  "Epilogue  to  Dramatis  Persona?." 


220  BROWNING. 

11 

Browning's  idea  of  truth  is  of  a  piece  with  his  idea 
of  will  and  freedom,  and  it  is  at  once  realistic  and  tran- 
scendental. Browning  practiced  the  same  realism  on 
truth  as  he  did  on  faith.  As  some  parts  of  our  faith  are 
more  vital  and  other  parts  less  vital  and  some  dead,  and 
as  we  must  pare  away  the  less  vital  and  dead  at  the  risk 
of  incompleteness,  so  truth  to  us  is  truth  only  to  the  de- 
gree that  it  has  been  vitalized  by  our  experience.  Truth 
is  a  term  almost  synonymous  with  experience.  Brown- 
ing's idea  of  it  is  in  open  conflict  with  Clough's  famous 
lines: 

It   fortifies   my  soul   to   know 
That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so.'' 

Browning  does  not  deny  that  there  may  be  an  objective 
standard  of  truth,  but  what  he  insists  on  in  particular  is 
that  truth  in  order  to  be  live  truth  must  have  an  expe- 
riencer,  one  who  practices  it ;  otherwise  truth  is  dead  and 
barren : 

Whom  do  you  count  the  worst  man  upon  earth? 
Be  sure,  he  knows,  in  his  conscience,  more 
Of  what  right  is,  than  arrives  at  birth 
In  the  best  man's  acts  that  we  bov/  before: 
This  last  knows  better — ^true,  but  my   fact  is, 
'Tis  one  thing  to  know,  and  another  to  practice. 
And  thence  I  conclude  that  the  real  God-function 
Is  to  furnish  a  motive  and  an  injunction 
For  practicing  what  we  know   already.^ 

Truth  is  vitalized  by  practicing  what  we  know ;  the  "soul 
declares  itself"  by  'the  thing  it  does" — let  this  never  be 
forgotten ;  it  is  only  by  experienceing  it  that  truth  has 
any  practical  worth ;  we  are  constantly  in  the  act  of  mak- 


'"It  Fortifies  My  Soul  to  Know." 
*  "Christmas  Eve." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  221 

ing  truth  ;  and  the  real  God-function  is  to  furnish  a  motive 
to  practice  what  we  already  know,  to  make  truth  alive  by 
practice. 

But  motives  lie  in  the  heart  and  in  the  feelings,  and 
it  is  by  the  dictates  and  demands  of  the  heart  that  we 
determine  what  we  will  have  our  truth  to  be : 

The  human  heart's  best;  you  prefer 

Making  that  prove  the  minister 

To  truth ;  you  prove  its  wants  and  needs, 

And  hopes  and  fears,  then  try  what  creeds 

Meet  these  most  aptly, — resolute 

That  faith  plucks  such  substantial  fruit 

Wherever  these  two  correspond." 

It  is  the  heart — its  wants  and  needs,  its  hopes  and  fears 
— that  is  the  selecting  agent  in  vitalizing  truth ;  an  agent 
in  whose  selections  and  directions  we  are  to  put  absolute 
faith.  "Talk  of  logic  and  necessity  and  categories  and  the 
absolute  and  the  contents  of  the  whole  philosophical  ma- 
chine-shop as  you  will,  the  only  real  reason  I  can  think 
of  why  anything  should  ever  come  is  that  some  one  zvish- 
cs  it  to  be  here.  It  is  demanded,  demanded,  it  may  be,  to 
give  relief  to  no  matter  how  small  a  fraction  of  the 
world's  mass.  This  is  living  reason,  and  compared  with 
it  material  causes  and  logical  necessities  are  spectral 
things.""  The  heart  indeed  is  best.  Its  wishes  and  de- 
mands come  nearer  to  living  reason  and  living 
truth  than  "logic  and  necessity  and  categories  and  the  ab- 
solute." Intuitive  truth  is  far  more  vital  than  logical 
truth.  In  attempting  to  describe  on  the  witness  stand 
the  way  in  which  a  new  and  important  truth  came  to  him, 
one  of  Browning's  characters  in  "The  Ring  and  the  Book" 
says: 


"Easter  Day." 

William  James,  "Pragmatism." 


aai  BROWNING. 

"Thought?"  nay  Sirs,  what  shall  follow  was  not  thought: 

I  have  thought  sometimes,  and  thought  long  and  hard. 

I  have  stood  before,  gone  round  a  serious  thing. 

Tasked  my  whole  mind  to  touch  and  clasp  it  close. 

As  I  stretch  forth  my  arm  to  touch  this  bar, 

God  and  Man,  and  what  duty  I  owe  both, — 

I  dare  to  say  I  have  confronted  these 

In  thought :  but  no  such  faculty  helped  here. 

I  put  forth  no  thought, — powerless,  all  that  night 

I  paced  the  city :  it  was  the  first  Spring. 

By  the  invasion  I  lay  passive  to. 

In  rushed  new  things,  the  old  were  rapt  awav.^" 

Thus  the  heart  can  intuitively  arrive  at  a  conclusion — 
a  new  and  satisfying  truth — which  logic  miserably  fails 
to  reach  at  all. 

Browning,  moreover,  completely  reverses  the  concep- 
tion that  truth  is  to  be  acquired  from  without,  and  makes 
the  truth  to  proceed  outward  from  an  inmost  center  with- 
in us.  This  is  a  central  position  with  Browning,  and  is 
in  full  harmony  with  the  conception  that  the  soul  of  man 
is  free  and  creative,  self-directing  and  self-developing, 
independent  of  heredity  and  environment: 

There  is  an  inmost  center  in  us  all, 
Where  truth  abides  in  fulness ;  and  around. 
Wall  upon  wall,  the  gross  flesh  hems  it  in, 
This  perfect,  clear  perception — which  is  truth. 
A  baffling  and  perverting  carnal  mesh 
Binds  it,  and  makes  all  error:  and,  to  know. 
Rather  consists  in  opening  out  a  way 
Whence  the  imprisoned  splendor  may  escape, 
Than  in  effecting  entry  for  a  light 
Supposed  to  be  without." 

But  truth  is  also  and  in  far  fuller  measure  in  the  Heart 
of  God : 


*'  Caponsacchi. 
""Paracelsus." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  223 

The  truth  in  God's  breast 
Lies  trace  for  trace  upon  ours  impressed : 
Though  he  is  so  bright  and  we  so  dim, 
We  are  made  in  his  image  to  witness  him.'" 

And  vvlien  wc  try  to  express  the  idea  of  these  two  pas- 
sages in  one,  that  is,  when  we  attempt  to  draw  the  center 
of  truth  in  God  into  harmony  with  the  center  of  truth  in 
ourselves,  we  get  the  following : 

Truth  inside,  and  outside,  truth  also ;  and  between 
Each,  falsehood  that  is  change,  as  truth  is  permanence. 
The  individual  soul  works  through  the  shows  of  sense, 
(Which,  ever  proving  false,  still  promise  to  be  true) 
Up  to  an  outer  soul  as  individual  too; 
And,  through  the  fleeting,  lives  to  die  into  the  fixed, 
And  reach  at  length,  'God,  man,  or  both  together  mixed.'" 

And  God's  very  Self  thus  comes  so  near  to  our  self  that 

He  glows  above 
With   scarce  an   intervention,  presses  close 
And  palpitatingly,  his  soul  o'er  ours."" 

And  this  reminds  us  of  Wordsworth  and  the  truth 
of  mysticism,  for  the  heart  of  mysticism  lies  in  the  effort 
of  a  man  to  put  himself  at  once  at  the  center  of  his  own 
being  and  at  the  center  of  God's  being  and  make  those 
two  centers,  not  imaginatively,  but  actually,  identical. 
And  this  is  what  Browning  attempts  to  do  in  these  pas- 
sages. Yet  Browning  is  not  strictly  speaking  a  mystic. 
lie  is  characteristically  Browning  and  not  Wordsworth, 
The  last  three  passngcs  quoted  are  exceptional  rather  than 
typical,  and  throughout  his  poetry  as  a  whole  Browning 
is  far  less  concerned  about  the  mystic  union  of  God  and 
man  than  about  the  nature  of  man  himself.  Though  man 
aspires  up  to  God  with  boundless  aspiration,  yet  he  keeps 


"Christmas  Eve." 
Fifine  at  the  Fair." 
"Lr.ria." 


224  BROWNING. 

his  own  identity  intact.  He  remains  flesh  and  blood  all 
the  while.  It  is  not  the  whole  of  the  infinite  that  interests 
Browning  but  just  so  much  of  the  infinite  as  can  be  cram- 
med and  packed  into  finite  man.  So  Browning  may  be 
called,  if  distinction  in  terms  may  be  made,  a  transcen- 
dentalist  rather  than  a  mystic;  a  transcendentalist,  first, 
because  for  him  the  basis  of  truth  lies  in  our  inner  intui- 
tions, passions,  and  volitions  rather  than  in  logical  catego- 
ries, and  secondly,  because  he  concerns  himself  mainly 
with  these  same  intuitions  and  passions  and  volitions, 
their  nature  and  their  development,  rather  than  with  the 
mystic  union  of  God  with  man. 

The  dift'erences  between  transcendentalism  and  mysti- 
cism are  on  the  surface  and  in  the  intonations  of  the 
words.  There  are  no  fundamental  differences  between 
them.  They  are  both  born  of  the  will.  They  are  both 
characterized  by  intensity  and  innerness.  Mysticism  is 
generally  reserved  to  express  the  greater  degree  of  inten- 
sity and  innerness.  Transcendentalism  remains  within 
the  bounds  of  the  articulate,  while  mysticism  tends  to 
hover  about  the  points  where  speech  drops  into  silence. 
Transcendentalism  concerns  itself  with  man's  inner  life 
of  passions  and  volitions,  while  mysticism  is  concerned 
with  the  union  of  this  inner  life  with  the  life  of  God. 
Transcendentalism  emphasizes  the  present  and  looks  to- 
ward the  future,  while  mysticism  has  a  passion  for  the 
past.  Mysticism,  however,  annuls  the  past  by  transcend- 
ing time,  and  lives  in  the  present.  Transcendentalism 
may  be  called  realistic  mysticism. 

Browning's  mystical  tendencies,  which  we  have  term- 
ed transcendentalism,  take  two  directions.  Far  more 
interesting  than  the  mystic  union  of  God  and  man,  is  the 
union  of  soul  with  soul  and  the  soul  of  man  with  the  soul 
of  Christ  w^ho  was  an  earthly  character.     And  these  tw^o 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  225 

things  are  profoundly  characteristic  of  Browning.  Tlicy 
show  his  strong  sense  of  rcahsm.  The  characters  of  men 
and  tlie  character  of  Christ  are  tangible  objects,  and  one 
can  deal  with  them  in  a  tangible  way.  Browning  always 
insists  on  dealing  with  objects  tangibly  and  on  calling 
things  by  their  right  names.  He  insists  on  calling  a  pas- 
sion a  passion  and  not  something  else,  a  dead 
feeling  a  dead  one  and  a  quickened  feeling  a 
quickened  one,  no  matter  what  radical  or  liber- 
al conclusion  this  resolute  realism  may  lead  to. 
But  however  realistically  one  may  deal  with  the  intui- 
tions, passions,  and  wills  of  men,  these  qualities  are 
forever  the  substance  of  idealism  and  transcendentalism. 
We  may  say,  then,  that  Browning  dealt  realistically  with 
transcendental  matter;  and  no  doubt  this  statement  is 
very  near  the  truth  in  spite  of  its  being  a  paradox. 

Truth  is  not  only  actualized  experience,  and  from 
within  and  intuitive,  but  it  is  highly  personal  and  trans- 
cendental. Each  person's  truth  is  different  from  every 
other  person's,  just  as  each  person  is  different  from  every 
other  person.  "Never,"  says  Browning,  "shall  I  believe 
any  two  souls  were  made  similar:" 

Take  the  least  man  of  all  mankind,  as  I ; 
Look  at  his  head  and  heart,  find  how  and  why 
He  differs  from  his  fellows  utterly." 

As  man  differs  utterly  from  his  fellows,  so  his  truth, 
vitalized  in  his  experience,  dift'ers  likewise.  What  is 
truth  to  one  may  be  darkness  to  another.  Thus  in  the 
poem  "My  Star"  this  is  most  beautifully  enforced: 


""Epilogue  to  Dramatis  Personoe." 


226  BROWNING. 

All  that  I  know 

Of  a  certain  star 

Is,  it  can  throw 

(Like  the  angled   spar) 

Now  a  dart  of  red, 

Now  a  dart  of  blue ; 

Till  my  friends  have  said 

They  would  fain  see,  too, 
My  star  that  dartles  the  red  and  the  blue ! 
Then  it  stops  like  a  bird;  like  a  flower,  hangs  furled: 
They  must  solace  themselves  with  the  Saturn  above  it. 
What  matter  to  me  if  their  star  is  a  world? 
Mine  has  opened  its  soul  to  me;  therefore  I  love  it. 

Thus  trtith  is  intensely  personal  and  depends  for  its  dis- 
closure upon  the  experiencer. 

But,  however  much  man  differs  from  his  fellows  and 
however  much  one  man's  truth  differs  from  another's, 
souls  need  each  other  here  below  in  love  and  friendship 
and  must  possess  each  other.  In  this  direction  truth,  in 
its  greatest  power,  lies,  for  here  man  has  his  deepest 
and  most  vital  experiences.  Love  is  better  than  states- 
manship, soldiership,  poetry,  sculpture,  or  music.  Brown- 
ing tells  us  in  "The  Last  Ride  Together;"  it  is  truly 
the  greatest  thing  in  the  world.  "Love  is  best,"  emphat- 
ically. It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  attraction  which 
souls  here  in  the  flesh  have  for  each  other  was  the  deep- 
est of  all  the  deep  and  varied  interests  of  Browning. 

These  experiences  of  soul  union  are  highly  intuitional 
and  mystical  and  are.  at  their  deepest,  utterly  beyond  the 
power  of  words.  Science  and  philosophy  can  express 
many  truths  of  life  that  point  toward  the  inner  core  of 
experience.  Poetry  can  strike  an  attitude  of  mind  and 
render  an  experience  that  comes  far  nearer  the  inner 
core  of  experience  than  that  which  science  and  philoso- 
phy can  render.    But  the  inner  experience  of  soul  attrac- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM,  227 

tion  goes  far  beyond  the  power  of  poetry  to  communi- 
cate. Every  creature  can  boast  two  soul-sides,  one  open 
to  the  world  and  communicable,  the  other  open  only  to 
love  and  incommunicable : 

God  be  tlianked,  the  meanest  of  his  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her! 

This  I  say  of  me,  but  think  of  you.  Love! 

This  to  you — yourself  my  moon  of  poets! 

Ah,  but  that's  the  world's  side,  there's  the  wonder. 

Thus  they  see  you,  praise  you,  think  they  know  you ! 

There,  in  turn  I  stand  with  them  and  praise  you — 

Out  of  my  own  self,  I  dare  to  phrase  it. 

But  the  best  is  when  I  glide  from  out  them, 

Cross  a  step  or  two  of  dubious  twilight. 

Come  out  on  the  other  side,  the  novel 

Silent  silver  lights  and  darks  undreamed  of. 

Where  I  hush  and  bless  myself  with  silence.'* 

It  is  easy  enough  to  give  praise  to  a  poetess.  Any  one 
may  "dare  to  phrase  it,"  but  that  is  the  world's  side  of  her. 
When,  however,  one  is  in  love  with  a  poetess  and  crosses 
a  step  or  two  of  dubious  twilight  and  feels  the  spell  of 
silent  silver  lights  and  darks  undreamed  of  it  is  far  better 
for  one  to  hush  and  bless  himself  with  silence: 

Oh,  their  Rafael  of  the  dear  Madonnas, 
Oh,  their  Dante  of  the  dread  Inferno, 
Wrote  one  song — and  in  my  brain  I  sing  it, 
Drew  one  angel — borne,  see,  on  my  bosom !'" 

Browning  indeed  sang  it  in  his  brain,  in  his  experience, 
but  not  in  his  poetry,  for  the  deepest  experience  of  love  is 
inarticulate.  And  Browning  never  attempted  to  give 
utterance  to  the  inarticulate.  The  heart  can  never  unlock 
itself  fully.     Nor  even  did  Shakespeare  unlock  his  heart: 


'One  Word  More." 


228  BROWNING. 

'With  this  same  key  [Sonnet] 
Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart,'  once  more ! 
Did  Shakespeare?  If  so,  the  less  Shakespeare  he!" 

Now,  love,  which  is  intensely  personal  and  which  is 
the  deepest  essence  of  truth,  is  also  the  essence  of  the  life 
of  Christ,  for  Christ 

Himself  conceived  of  life  as  love, 
Conceived  of  love  as  what  must  enter  in, 
Fill  up,  make  one  with  his  each  soul  he  loved/* 

And  since  love  is  the  deepest  essence  of  truth  and  since 
Christ  conceived  of  life  as  love  and  entered  into  mystic 
union  with  "each  soul  he  loved,"  it  can  be  conceived  that 

The  acknowledgement  of  God  in  Christ 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it, 
And  has  so  far  advanced  thee  to  be  wise." 

These  are  the  words  of  the  dying  John  in  the  Desert,  but 
they  harmonize  with  Browning's  own  words  about  the 
Face  of  Christ  which  never  vanishes  but  grows,  and  has. 
Browning  says. 

Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows ! 

Browning's  religion  was  neither  traditional  nor  or- 
thodox. It  was  highly  individualistic.  The  two  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  soul — Love  and  Power — Christ 
realized  to  the  full  in  his  life.  Browning  arbitrarily  but 
enthusiastically  seized  upon  these  principles  and  made 
them  his  own.  He  had  no  deep  sense  of  sin  and 
of  the  necessity  of  redemption.  He  consequently  did  not 
make  much  of  the  principle  of  redemption,  which  plays 
such  an  important  part  in  traditional  and  orthodox  Chris- 


"  "House." 

""A  Death  in  the  Desert." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  229 

tianity.  But  he  felt  the  deepest  affinity  with  the  person 
of  Christ  through  the  agency  of  Love  and  Power,  and 
made  these  fundamental  soul  elements  the  basis  of  his 
religion. 

Alan  thus  is  the  measure  of  all  things  terrcstial  for 
Browning.  With  him  we  are  plunged  into  the  world 
within;  but  we  find  it  a  very  large  world  indeed,  a  world 
of  deep  and  inexhaustible  well  springs  of  life,  of  impris- 
oned splendors,  pent  up,  ready  to  burst  out  as  in  a  deluge 
and  escape,  "radiance  vast,  to  be  elicited  ray  by  ray,"  "new 
dreamed  energies,"  "power  and  love  and  will"  with  an 
"unmeasured  thirst  for  good,"  intuitions,  passions  and 
volitions,  vast  and  boundless.  This  world  is  also  large 
enough  to  contain  many  and  great  imperfections.  Im- 
mature instincts,  unsure  purposes,  embryonic  thoughts, 
escaped  fancies,  foolish  dreams — these  are  all  inextri- 
cably mixed  up  with  the  other  soul  goods  and  give  them 
plenty  of  work  to  do  and  plenty  of  free  play.  And  truth 
to  Browning  is  just  so  much  of  these  forces,  mature  or 
immature,  sure  or  unsure,  embryonic  or  otherwise,  as 
get  themselves  realized  in  experience.  Truth  may  be  de- 
fined as  the  amount  of  work  which  the  soul  does,  the 
additions  to  being  that  it  makes,  the  expansions  and  the 
dilations.  Truth  is  defined  in  the  terms — abundant  life 
and  freedom. 

What  are  Browning's  ideas  of  God  and  immortality? 
They  are  just  what  we  would  naturally  expect  after 
having  examined  his  ideas  of  truth  and  freedom.  There 
is  through  the  whole  of  his  poetry  a  continual  and  pas- 
sionate insistence  on  faith  in  immortality  and  the  need  of 
God  in  the  soul,  accompanied  by  vague  and  indefinite 
notions  as  to  the  conditions  of  immortality  and  the  na- 
ture of  God.  The  mere  fact  that  the  heart  passionately 
demands  immortalitv  is  abundant  reason  to  believe  that 


230  BROWNING. 

it  is  to  have  immortality.  This  is  a  living  reason  and 
ought  to  be  convincing.  Passion  and  love,  energy  and 
power,  are  such  good  things  in  themselves  that  they  ought 
to  continue  forever,  so  that  this  world  cannot  be  the  "be 
all  and  end  all"  of  life.  The  more  that  a  man  feels  that 
he  is  a  "God  though  in  the  germ"  and  the  more  he  is  at 
the  same  time  conscious  of  vast  imperfections,  the  more 
he  will  demand  another  world  than  this  for  the  full  real- 
ization of  himself.  Besides,  those  souls  that  have  chosen 
>vorthily  and  loved  passionately  but  have,  on  account 
of  unfortunate  circumstances  or  ill-fitted  environment, 
tailed  here  in  love  and  achievement,  as  for  instance,  the 
speaker  in  "Evelyn  Hope,"  may  possess  themselves  in 
patience  and  look  to  another  world  for  the  things  they 
missed  on  earth.  Again,  the  imperfections  of  this  life 
certainly  suggest  beginnings  of  a  larger  life  to  be  carried 
on  otherwise : 

On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven  a  perfect 
round. 

And  thus  God  and  immortality  are  abundantly  assured 
to  the  soul. 

On  the  vagueness  and  indefiniteness  of  Browning's 
notions  of  God  and  immortality  much  might  be  said,  but 
the  statements  here  must  be  brief.  From  such  poems  as 
"Evelyn  Hope"  and  "The  Last  Ride  Together"  it  is  not 
very  certain  whether  in  heaven  the  immortals  are  given 
in  marriage  or  are  not  given  in  marriage ;  and  this  is  emi- 
nently typical  of  all  that  Browning  has  to  offer  on  the 
subject  of  immortality  as  a  state  for  the  blessed.  In  like 
manner  God  is  sometimes  conceived  as  the  all-complete, 
infinite  perfection,  and  as  never  changing,  and  sometimes 
again  as  in  a  state,  like  ourselves,  of  realizing  his  own 
possibilities.    God  is  indeed  omnipotent,  omnipresent,  and 


TKANSCKNUUNTALISM.  23I 

omniscient,  and  yet  man  may  possibly  "worst  e'en  the 
Giver  in  one  gift"  and  "o'ertake  God's  own  speed  in  the 
one  way  of  love."  Though  from  the  dread  Sabaoth"strcam 
the  worlds,  life  and  nature,"  yet  man's  own  aspirations 
and  imperfections  and  sacrifices  may  contain  something 
that  arouses  the  jealousy  of  the  Divine  Mind.  And  thus 
the  contradictions  of  indefiniteness  run. 

Let  us  take,  for  instance,  the  problem  heretofore  men- 
tioned as  the  crucial  problem,  how  the  flexible  finite  can 
be  tightly  fitted  into  the  fixed  and  infinite.  What  is 
Browning's  solution  of  it?  His  solution  consists  mainly 
in  substituting  something  else  for  it  and  ignoring  the 
problem  proper.  That  is,  he  insists  on  the  flexibility  and 
changeableness  of  the  finite  and  concerns  himself  little 
with  the  fixedness  of  the  infinite.  The  infinite  as  a  whole 
is  uninteresting;  only  so  much  of  it  is  interesting  as 
can  be  actualized  in  finite  experience.  In  fact, 
such  terms  as  the  fixed,  infinite,  neverchanging 
law,  the  absolute,  predestination,  are  little  more  than  so 
many  names  to  Browning.  They  do  not  make  for  free- 
dom. They  are  not  vitalized  in  his  experience  and  there- 
fore are  no  living  truth  to  him.  Browning  would  say  it  is 
enough  to  know  that  the  world  here  and  now  is  imperfect, 
changeable,  flexible,  malleable  and  flowing,  and  that  man's 
soul  forever  yearns  up  to  God,  that  man  is  free  and  that 
he  can  exercise  his  love  and  power  and  will,  his  resusci- 
tating and  regenerating  powers,  in  moulding  the  world 
and  in  determining  his  own  destiny.  And  beyond  that — 
"With  God  be  the  rest:" 

Enough  now,  if  the  Right 
And   Good  and   Infinite 
Be  named  here.'" 


'  "'Rablii  Ben  Ezra." 


232  BROWNING. 

Browning  thus  takes  a  genuinely  realistic,  flesh  and 
blood  attitude  toward  things  finite,  flexible,  and  incom- 
plete, but  a  very  colorless  attitude  toward  things  fixed 
and  rigid,  the  unchangeableness  of  law.  And  the  reason 
for  it  is  plain.  One  who  insists  on  the  idea  that  every 
man  "differs  utterly  from  his  fellows,"  that  each  one's 
truth  and  each  one's  God  is  materially  different  from  that 
of  his  fellows,  and  that  each  individual  is  endowed  with 
something  like  the  God-creating  power  of  adding  self  to 
self,  is  driven,  by  strict  logic  at  least,  to  hold  something 
of  a  pluralistic  rather  than  a  monistic  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, that  there  are  creative  energies  in  the  world  inde- 
pendent of  each  other.  This  is  the  logic  of  the  situation, 
and  if  Browning  were  a  technical  philosopher  he  would 
have  to  take  some  such  position.  But  Browning  is  not 
a  technical  philosopher  and  does  not  follow  the  strict  log- 
ic of  the  situation.  His  intuitions  and  imagination  teach 
him  otherwise,  and  he  always  takes  the  monistic  view. 
Yet  the  sum  total  of  things  which  involve  one  Faith,  one 
never-changing  Law,  and  one  God,  are  feebly  dealt  with 
by  him.  Feebly  because  the  greatness  and  absolute  diver- 
sity of  gifts  which  he  generously  distributes  to  so 
many  creatures  give  him  a  weak  hold  on  the  entirety, 
the  wholeness,  and  the  unity  of  all  things.  Browning's 
system,  if  we  may  use  such  a  dry  word  in  this  place,  is 
decidedly  an  open  system  where  there  is  great  room  for 
endless  expansion  and  freedom ;  and  expansion  and  free- 
dom are  the  things  for  which  he  pre-eminently  stands. 

The  best  parts  about  any  great  poet's  system,  as  far 
as  he  has  any  such  thing,  is  that  it  is  not  only  inarticu- 
late but  that  it  is  open.  This  is  necessary  in  order  to  give 
free  play  to  the  poet's  creative  energy.  Wordsworth's 
system  was  especially  an  open  system;  but  Browning's 
was  more  decidedly  so.    Browning,  like  all  poets,  was  in 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  233 

love  with  existence,  but  existence  in  the  concrete,  and 
concrete  objects  that  seem  free  and  independent.  And 
these  free  and  concrete  objects  of  the  universe  are  so 
various  in  kind  and  infinite  in  number  that  they  will  not 
fall  into  any  closed  or  complete  system.  The  fundament- 
al ideas  of  system  are  unity,  harmony  of  parts,  likeness 
of  pattern,  and  a  fixed  principle  lying  underneath  and 
running  through  all.  And  against  this  idea  of  fixed  prin- 
ciple freedom  rebels.  Browning's  "all's  love,  yet  all's 
law"  means  mainly  that  all's  love  and  freedom.  It  means 
the  indulgence  of 

Everj-  instinct  of  the  soul 
There  where  law,  life,  joy,  impulse,  are  one  thing !^ — 

which  is  pronounced  to  be  "the  ultimate  angels'  law." 
Browning  has  by  no  means  shown  how  the  flexible  finite 
fits  into  the  fixed  infinite.  How  such  diverse  things  as 
good  and  evil  can  exist  in  the  same  universe  and  have 
their  source  in  the  same  author,  how  impersonal  law 
and  personal  freedom,  how  predestination  and  free-will, 
how^  fixedness  and  flexibility  can  ever  be  harmonized  in 
a  world  of  fact, — these  problems  have  not  been  solved  by 
Browning.  We  should  not  expect  him,  nor  any  other  poet, 
to  solve  them.  We  should  expect  him  to  take  a  character- 
istic attitude  toward  thcni ;  and  a  characteristic  and  con- 
sistent attitude  Browning  has  taken.  Every  man,  be  he 
philosopher,  poet,  or  practical  man  of  affairs,  takes,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  an  attitude  toward  them.  We 
are  hoping  they  may  be  solved  sometime  in  the  future. 
The  race  does  not  despair  of  such  things.  But  it  is  enough 
in  these  pages  to  know  that  however  weakly  he  dealt  with 


"A  Death  in  the  Desert." 


234  BROWNING. 

the  unity  and  sum  total  of  things,  Robert  Browning  has 
given  by  far  the  most  powerful  exposition  in  modern 
times  of  the  soul's  individual  worth  and  power,  and  of 
man's  boundless  energy  and  freedom.  * 


*  See  Note  7,  Appendix. 


CHAPTER  XII 


BROWNING:    ART   AND   LIBERALIS:^!. 

Bro\vniiig_wiis..^ liberal  in  art.  as  well  as  iii  liis.pliil- 
osoph3^  of  life.  He  was  not  s^ti&lied  with  the  conven- 
tional_forms  of  art  and  proceeded  to  create  new  forms. 
He  was  dissatisfied  with  the  usual  metrical  schemes  for 
poems  and  e^^ierioieDted  with  new  meters.  He  was  dar- 
ing in  the  use  of  phraseology  that  is  heard  in  common 
speech  and  that  is  often  near  the  improper.  He  took 
liberties  with  sentence  construction  by  suppressing  the 
less  important  words  for  the  sake  of  condensation,  and 
by  collocating  words  in  unusual  ways.  He  was  a_  liberal 
in  introducing  commonplace  associations  of  life  into  his 
poetry  and  TTruTgTng  in  concrete  imagery  that  is  not  tra- 
ditionally considered  beautiful. 

Xll'5ilSl?.J?'s_work_shows  irregularities  and  sometimes 
unpardonable  license,  tliemain  effect  of  it  has  been  to 
show  the  variety  of  uses  to  which  our  metrical  system  can 
be  piut,  lo  enlarge  the  range  of  the  English  language  in 
expression,  to  give  wider  scope  to  the  use  of  concrete 
objects  in  poetry,  to  make  poetry  approximate  more  near- 
ly to  the  real  and  detailed  things  of  life  than  has  been 
supposed  to  be  possible,  and  to  save  to  poetry  such  things 
as  pins,  axes,  crowbars,  umbrellas,  creaking  pianos,  blind 
horses,  and  ragged  thistle-stalks,  wjtli  which  some  of  our 
most  common  and  sometimes  deepest  affections  are  as- 
sodated.  ~ 


236  r.ROVVNIXG. 

This  realistic  attitude  in  Browning  towarH  things 
actual  is  matched  only  by  his  transcendental  attitude 
toward  those  same  things.  It  is  only  when  they  can  be 
set  to  the  music  of  life  that  they  are  of  value.  It  is  only 
when  they  can  be  made  to  associate  with  a  life  that  is 
filled  with  passion  and  power  that  they  become  signifi- 
cant. It  is  only  when  this  life  itself  can  be  made  to  ex- 
pand and  dilate  that  it  can  be  saved  to  art  and  to  truth. 
Poetry  is  the  art  by  which  we  give  a  new  and  higher  eval- 
uation to  both  the  outer  and  inner  life  of  things.  The 
finite  everywhere, — and  the  finite  of  Browning  always 
means  something  very  realistic  and  often  something  very 
homely, — must  partake  of  the  infinite.  It  must  be  filled 
with  the  power  and  glory  of  heaven,  like  Boehme's  rose, 
celebrated  in  the  verse  of  some  stout  John  of  Halber- 
stadt : 

He  with  a  'look  you!'  vents  a  brace  of  rhymes, 
And  in  there  breaks  the  sudden  rose  herself, 
Over  us,  under,  round  us  every  side,   .    .    . 
Buries  us  with  a  glory,  young  once  more, 
Pouring  heaven  into  this  shut  house  of  life.^ 

This  way  of  conceiving  a  thing  at  once  as  actual  and 
ideal,  realistic  and  transcendental,  of  exercising  the  see- 
ing eye  upon  it  with  great  definiteness,  and  yet  perceiving 
in  it  inexhaustible  life  and  beauty  without  allowing  it  to 
lose  its  identity  one  whit — this  is  an  absolute  requisite 
for  great  art.  Let  great  art  be  realistic  if  it  pleases,  (and 
it  is  often  terribly  realistic  in  no  juggling  sense  of  that 
term,  more  truly  than  the  art  that  calls  itself  realistic), 
but  it  must  also  be  creative  and  idealizing.  There  is  no 
contradiction  in  the  seeming  paradox  that  it  can  be  at 


^  "Transcendentalism." 


ART  AND   LIBERALISM.  237 

once  the  most  realistic  and  the  most  transcendental.  It 
has  a  hunger  for  facts  and  also  for  new  idealizations. 
And  it  is  large  enough  to  represent  in  itself  a  great  deal 
of  both.  It  is  really  dilating  and  expansive,  for  it  pos- 
sesses abundant  life.  There  perhaps  has  never  been  an 
actual  human  character  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  unless 
it  were  Shakespeare  himself,  with  as  full  a  life  of  power 
and  will  and  passion  as,  say,  the  character,  Othello.  So 
that  though  this  character  makes  an  impression  on  us  of 
actuality,  of  flesh  and  blood  qualities,  he  impresses  us 
too  as  having  something  additional,  the  created  energy 
and  power  the  artist  gave  him — something  more  than 
fact. 

But  the  largeness  of  mould  into  which  great  art  casts 
its  characters  and  the  passion  and  will  and  freedom 
which  it  displays  and  the  liberty  it  takes  confound  the 
prudent  and  the  wise.  It  shatters  their  little  matter-of- 
fact  systems  to  pieces.  Dying  for  love,  and  happily  too, 
as  some  of  Browning's  characters  do,  seems  in  the  eyes 
of  these  persons  an  outrage  to  humanity.  No  doubt  the 
smug  and  learned  pharisee  was  astounded  beyond  all 
measure  at  the  extraordinary  liberties  the  Teacher  took 
who  first  uttered  the  words  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath 
been  said.  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor,  and  hate  thine 
enemy.  But  I  say  unto  you.  Love  your  enemies,  bless 
them  that  curse  you,"  etc.,  for  this  seemed  to  reach  the 
extreme  limit  of  imprudence  and  to  be  against  all  tradi- 
tion and  convention.  No  doubt  the  prudential  and  the 
compromising  have  little  sympathy  for  poor  Desdemona 
in  the  play  who  blessed  him  that  cursed  her  and  who 
meekly  submitted  to  her  fate  and  died  for  love  without  as 
much  as  raising  a  hand  to  assert  her  rights  and  dignity  as 
a  woman.  No  doubt  prim  makers  of  systems  feel  like 
clenching  their  teeth  at  such  similar  perversions  of  their 


238  BROWNING. 

systems  as  are  implied  in  the  following  suggestions  of 
Browning  on  the  secret  of  becoming  a  master  of  men: 

Resolve,  for  first  step,  to  discard 
Nine-tenths  of  what  you  are!  To  make,  you  must  be 

marred, — 
To  raise  your  race,  must  stoop, — to  teach  them  aught, 

must  learn 
Ignorance,  meet  halfway  what  most  3^ou  hope  to  spurn 
r  the  sequel So  may  you  master  men.° 

To  brush  aside  traditions  and  conventions,  to  assert 
the  maxims  of  the  simple  which  confound  the  wise,  to 
insist  on  stooping  in  order  to  rise,  to  penetrate  through 
the  show  of  things  into  things  themselves,  to  reach  the 
original  sources  of  life  and  love  and  to  find  life  and  love 
in  abundant  overflow,  to  live  for  love  rather  than  for 
^  fame,  to  will  mightily  to  die  for  love  if  need  be — these 
are  the  paradoxical  but  inspiring  ideals  of  the  masters  of 
life  and  of  men.  It  is  first  eminently  worth  while  to  be- 
come thoroughly  alive — alive  in  body  and  brain  and 
^  mind  and  soul,  and  then  to  accept  cheerfully  the  con- 

sequences that  this  kind  of  living  may  bring.  Alive  in 
two  senses — ^in  the  common,  practical  sense  of  living  and 
in  the  idealistic  creative  sense,  which  is  dilating  and  ex- 
pansive. And  to  meet  these  latter  and  higher  demands 
of  life  the  artist  is  constantly  impelled,  as  Wordsworth 
said,  to  create  intuitions  and  passions  and  volitions  in 
the  universe  where  he  does  not  find  them.  And  in  the 
interest  of  more  abundant  life,  Browning  is  a  grand  ful- 
fillment of  the  statement  of  Wordsworth.  By  the  sheer 
power  and  intensity  of  passion  and  will  Wordsworth  in 
his  best  moments  penetrated  the  hearts  of  men  and  the 
universe  more  deeply  perhaps  than  Browning  ever  did. 


'-^ 


^  "Fifine  at  the  Fair.' 


ART  AND   LIBERALISM.  239 

But  his  penetration  was  intensive  rather  than  broadly 
universal,  and  in  this  sense  he  himself  is  the  best  fulfill- 
ment of  his  own  statement.  Yet  Wordsworth's  great 
moments  were  comparatively  few,  and  the  restraints  he 
placed  on  life  in  many  directions  prevented  the  forces  of 
sense  and  passion  from  bursting  forth  into  energy  and 
power  in  any  flood-tide  in  his  poetry.  Brmvjiing,  on 
the  other  hand,  wiilr  gr-eater  sustained  energy,  with  his 
principle  af_fl£sli_and_  soul  equilibrium,  and  his  princi- 
ple of  gain  and  expansion,  made  the  pent  up  intuitions  and 
passions  and  volitions  of  the  soul  dilate  with  energy  and 
power  that  have  something  of  Shakespearean  magnitude 
about  them.    Browning  was  a  genuine  liberal  in  art. 

But  this  full  flood-tide  of  passion  and  energy  in 
Browning  is  precisely  what  alienates  some  critics.  They 
say  he  has  no  reticence,  no  reserve,  that  his  imagination 
does  not  exercise  a  selective  power  in  repressing  the  ugly 
and  seizing  the  beautiful,  and  that  his  style  is  too  profuse 
to  show  any  economy  of  attention.  Such  criticism  tends 
to  obscure  the  issue.  For  what  is  the  state  of  the  case 
with  Browning?  LtOok  at  the  long  series  of  dramatic 
monologues  like  "Saul,"  "Cleon,"  "Abt  Vogler,"  "Rabbi  .^ 
Ben  Ezra,"  "My  Last  Ducliess,"  etc.,  and  find  anywhere  in 
literature  from  a  single  hand  an  equal  amount  of  poetic 
matter  condensed  into  so  narrow  a  space.  It  may  be 
said  tliat  these  poems  are  the  very  quintessence  of  econ- 
omized expression.  Of  the  dramatic  monologue  Profes- 
sor E.  Johnson  writes :  "The  introduction  of  a  second 
person  acting  powerfully  upon  the  speaker  throughout, 
draws  the  latter  forth  into  a  more  complete  and  varied 
expression  of  his  mind.  The  silent  person  in  the  back- 
ground, who  may  be  all  the  time  master  of  the  situation, 
supplies  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the  imagination."  This 
condensed  art  form,  which  is  a  favorite  with  Brownmg, 


240  BROWNING. 

I  furnishes  an  offset  to  the  fulness  of  life  of  his  characters. 
Browning's  own  art  ideal  is  expressed  in  Andrea's  de- 
scription of  art  in  "Andrea  del  Sarto:" 

Well,  I  can  fancy  how  he  did  it  all, 
Pouring  his  soul,  with  kings  and  popes  to  see. 
Reaching,  that  heaven  might  so  replenish  him, 
/  Above  and  through  his  art — for  it  gives  way. 

To  fill  a  form  so  full  of  expanding  life  that  the  life  in  it 
tends  to  reach  above  and  through  the  form  and  make  the 
form  itself  give  way — this  is  Browning's  ideal  of  art. 
-^"^  And  when  this  ideal  is  attained,  as  it  frequently  is  in 
Browning,  it  insures  to  us  three  of  the  most  satisfying 
and  enduring  qualities  of  style — iinaginativ^  force,  ex- 
pressiveness, vitality.  Such  qualities  of  style  we  find  in 
their  highest  form  in,  for  example,  "Saul."  The  wild 
joys  of  physical  living,  the  vast  aspirations  arising  from 
a  noble  willingness  to  do  and  die  for  another,  the  engen- 
dering powers  of  spiritual  love,  the  shaking  of  the  very 
heavens  themselves  with  this  new  instrument  of  love — 
these  powers,  vividly  conjured  up  from  the  infinite  depths 
of  life  and  compressed  within  the  narrow  compass  of  the 
poem,  give  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the  imagination,  de- 
mand and  attain  a  wonderful  expressiveness  from  the 
language  itself,  and  make  the  poem  deeply  vital  through- 
out. The  tension  produced  between  the  swelling  life 
within  and  the  form  in  which  it  is  contained  makes  the 
poem  sensitive  and  alive  at  every  point.  It  gives  the 
poem  life,  individuality,  independent  existence,  makes  of 
it  a  creation — a  creation  that  can  take  care  of  itself  in 
this  world  as  well  as  can  any  other  created  thing  upon 
which  has  been  bestowed  the  gift  of  life. 

The  dramatic  monologue  of  Browning  achieves  com- 
pression,   expressiveness,    and   vitality    in    another    way. 


ART  AND  LIHKRALISM.  24 1 

Browning  is  not  concerned  with  the  whole  life  history 
of  a  soul.  There  are  all  kinds  of  experiences  that  are 
barren  in  their  influence  on  character,  and  these  are  pass- 
ed over  in  silence.  There  are  others  that  are  fruitful. 
They  may  be  trivial,  but  they  are  significant.  The  fruit- 
ful and  significant  experiences,  chiefly  those  associated 
with  the  mind  in  a  state  of  excitement,  or  those  connected 
with  a  central  and  critical  experience  of  the  character, 
are  seized  upon  and  rendered  in  the  monologue.J  Brown- 
ing seizes  his  character  at  a  point  where  he  can  watch 
the  inner  "play  and  action"'  of  his  mind,  where  he  "catch- 
es fact  in  the  making,"  where  he  can  press  close  to  the 
character's  inner  experience,  where  he  can  see  back  over 
his  character's  earlier  career  and  see  what  former  expe- 
riences cast  their  shadows  on  the  present,  where  he  can 
take  a  look  into  his  character's  future  and  get  glimpses  of 
what  is  to  be.  It  is  precisely  at  that  nexus  where  thought 
enters  into  action  that  we  receive  a  flashlight  of  personal- 
ity, a  revelation  of  human  motive  and  conduct.  It  is 
there  that  we  get  the  deepest  insight  into  human  charac- 
ter. And  Browning,  working  in  this  deeper  stratum  of 
human  nature,  flashes  forth  in  vivid  and  expressive  lan- 
guage the  wonders  he  has  seen. 

Though  Browning  is  not  interested  in  the  whole  life 
history  of  his  character,  he  is  interested  in  the  whole  of 
his  character's  experience  at  the  point  from  which 
he  has  chosen  to  view  it.  He  tries  to  render  the 
whole  of  the  single  experience,  and  this  fact  explains  the 
subtilty  and  complexity  of  Browning's  art.  A  single  ex- 
ample must  sufifice.  In  "Andrea  del  Sarto"  where  An- 
drea is  criticising  Rafael's  painting,  Andrea  says: 

That  arm  is  wrongly  put — and  there  again — 
A  fault  to  pardon  in  the  drawing's  lines, 
Its  body,  so  to  speak:  its  soul  is  right. 


242  BROWNING. 

He  means  right — that,  a  child  may  understand. 
Still,  what  an  arm !  and  I  could  alter  it : 
But  all  the  play,  the  insight  and  the  stretch — 
Out  of  me,  out  of  me! 

It  must  be  remembered  that  Andrea  is  under  the  stress 
of  excitement.  It  is  a  serious  situation  he  is  confronting 
with  his  wife,  and  it  is  of  great  moment  that  he  persuade 
her.  In  this  condition,  his  mind  becomes  conscious,  as 
any  mind  would,  of  everything — important  and  unimpor- 
tant, momentous  and  trivial.  He  sees  the  fault  in  the 
arm  at  one  instant,  and  in  the  same  instant  he  sees  that 
the  soul  is  right.  Swiftly  his  mind  turns  again  to  the 
faulty  arm  and  back  once  more  to  the  soul  of  the  picture. 
He  sees  everything  at  once  and  tries  to  express  every- 
thing at  once.  And  the  swift  movement  of  mind  that 
Browning  displays  in  rendering  not  a  part  but  the  whole 
of  a  character's  experience  at  a  given  time,  has  earned 
for  Browning  the  fame  of  an  analytical  thinker.  But 
note  what  the  thinking  consists  in.  There  is  to  be  render- 
ed, first,  not  a  logical  proposition,  but  a  per- 
sonality under  the  stress  of  excitement.  Andrea 
is  distinctly  not  a  proposition  but  a  character  in 
a  critical  emotional  and  volitional  state.  Second- 
ly, the  so  called  analysis  is  not  made  abstractly 
but  concretely.  First  the  arm,  then  the  soul,  and  then 
"the  insight  and  the  stretch !"  What  a  fine  metaphor  in 
the  word  "stretch !"  And  this  is  the  poetry  of  insight, 
not  of  logical  and  scientific  thought.  And  this  is  the 
way,  not  of  intellectual  analysis,  but  of  poetic  represen- 
tation.    The  result  is  concentrated,  expressive,  vital  po- 

I  etry. 

V^  When  a  character  is  under  the  stress  of  excitement 
and  is  facing  a  serious  situation  he  not  only  is  conscious 
of  all  the  trivial  and  momentous  things  connected  with 


,5"//    —  77  -/^^>" 

ART  AND  LIBERALISM.  243 

his  experiences  and  career,  but  he  also  is  conscious  of  his 
own  imperfections  and  his  own  soul  freedom.  He  feels 
that  he  is  overwhelmingly  unable  to  cope  with  the  situa- 
tion confronting  him;  yet  he  feels  a  free  moral  power 
within  himself  that  makes  him  worthy  to  overcome.  And 
this  fact  of  human  nature  furnishes  Browning  with  a 
lesson  in  art  as  well  as  a  lesson  in  morals.  Browning 
preferred  early  Italian  art  to  Greek  art  because  the  for- 
mer gives  a  sense  of  man's  strivings  and  imperfections 
and  a  sense  of  man's  spiritual  freedom,  while  the  latter 
does  not.  After  observing  the  strength  and  rounded 
beauty  of  Greek  statues  in  "Old  Pictures  in  Florence," 
he  says. 

Growth  came  when,  looking  your  last  on  them  all, 
You  turned  your  eyes  inwardly  one  fine  day 
And  cried  with  a  start — What  if  we  so  small       . 
Be  greater  and  grander  the  while  than  they? 
Are  they  perfect  of  lineament,  perfect  of  stature? 
In  both,  of  such  lower  types  are  we 
Precisely  because  of  our  wider  nature; 
For  time,  theirs — ours,   for  eternity. 

To-day's  brief  passion  limits  their  range; 

It  seethes  with  the  morrow  for  us  and  more. 

They  are  perfect — how  else?  they  shall  never  change: 

We  are  faulty — why  not?  we  have  time  in  store. 

The  Artificer's  hand  is  not  arrested 

With  us ;   we  are  rough-hewn,   nowise  polished : 

They  stand  for  our  copy,  and,  once  invested 

With  all  they  can  teach,  we  shall  see  them  abolished. 

'Tis  a  life-long  toil  till  our  lump  he  leaven — 
The  better!  What's  come  to  perfection  perishes. 
Things  learned  on  earth,  we  shall  practice  in  heaven ! 
Works  done  least  rapidly,  Art  most  cherishes. 
Thyself  shalt  afford  the  example,  Giotto! 


244  BROWNING. 

Thy  one  work,  not  to  decrease  or  diminish, 
Done  at  a  stroke,  was  just  (was  it  not?)  "O !" 
Thy  great  Campanile  is  still  to  finish. 

In  the  opening  of  this  poem  the  poet  one  warm  March 
day  "looked  over  the  aloed  arch  of  the  villa-gate"  that 
confronted  the  valley  where  Florence  lay  out  on  the 
Mountain-side,  and  said  that 

Of  all  I  saw  and  of  all  I  praised, 
The  most  to  praise  and  the  best  to  see, 
Was  the  startling  bell-tower  Giotto  raised : 
But  why  did  it  more  than  startle  me? 

What  more  than  startled  him  was  the  fact  that  although 
Giotto  had  finished  a  smaller  work,  he  had  here  planned 
so  magnificently  that  he  could  not  finish  what  he  had 
planned,  and  that  this  unfinished  work  was  higher  and 
greater  than  the  finished.  And  in  the  same  way  when 
the  poet  thinks  of  the  finish  and  the  perfection  of 
Greek  statues  he  cries  "with  a  start — What  if  we  so  small 
be  greater  and  grander  the  while  than  they?"  and  then 
asks  whether  Man  "shall  have  no  more  play  and  action 
than  joy  which  is  crystallized  forever,  or  grief,  an  eternal 
patrifaction?"  It  was  not  crystallized  joy  and  petrified 
grief,  as  represented  in  Greek  art,  that  Browning  wanted, 
but  it  was  play  and  action,  freedom !  and  a  sense  of  the 
eternal.  So  he  gives  the  early  Italian  painters  their 
"guerdon  and  glory  for  daring  so  much,  before  they  well 
did  it,"  and  for  giving  man,  through  their  art,  a  sense 
of  imperfection  and  a  sense  of  freedom. 

But  can  this  principle  of  imperfection  and  of  freedom 
be  applied  to  the  making  of  a  poem?  Is  it  worth  while 
to  plan  a  poem,  as  Giotto  did  his  bell-tower,  so  magnifi- 
cently that  it  cannot  be  completed  ?  Is  it  true  that  a  poem 
may,  in  its  formal  elements,  be  "rough-hewn  and  no  wise 


ART   AND   HUliRALISM.  245 

polished"  and  still  be  art?  These  questions  are  too  large 
to  be  answered  in  full  here,  but  a  few  things  may  be  said 
about  them.  Granting,  for  the  sake  of  the  argument, 
what  has  already  been  implied,  that  there  exists  an 
antithesis  between  form  and  content  in  poetry,  we  may 
say  that  the  principle  in  question  may  be  measurably 
applied  to  form.  Take  "Old  Pictures  in  Flor- 
ence," for  instance.  The  main  theme  embodied 
concretely  in  tlic  unfinished  bell-tower  is  stated  in  the 
beginning,  the  middle,  and  the  end  of  the  poem.  The 
details  from  the  old  pictures  in  Florence  amplify  the 
main  theme  of  the  poem.  The  stream  of  thought  in  the 
poem  flows  through  a  well-defined  and  unmistakable 
channel.  Yet  the  borders  of  the  stream  are  "rough- 
hewn,"  and  the  stream  is  constantly  threatening  to  over- 
flow its  banks.  It  has  the  power  to  make  and  to  modify 
its  own  channel,  well-defined  as  that  may  be.  The  con- 
tent of  a  poem  must  have  power  to  break  through  and 
mould  its  form  at  will.  We  are  here  easily  deceived  by 
words.  Forms  at  their  best  are  but  imperfect.  Harmony 
and  symmetry  are  but  relative  things.  "Paradise  Lost" 
has  harmonious  numbers,  but  could  it  have  been  possible 
for  any  one  to  make  it  harmoniously  symmetrical 
throughout?  Are  there  not  great  irregularities  in  "King_^ 
Lear?"  For  the  sake  of  bringing  the  "invisible  full  into 
play,"  does  it  not  let  the  symmetrically  "visible  go  to  the 
dogs?"  The  engendering  and  torrential  passion  and  en- 
erg}^  of  the  play  constantly  l)reak  through  the  boundaries 
of  imperfect  form,  enlarge  the  truth  without  violating  it, 
and  reveal  an  art  higher  than  the  merely  visible.  This,  or 
something  like  this,  was  the  faith  and,  in  a  measure,  the 
practice  of  our  great  modern  liberal  in  art. 

If  it  is  not  impossible  to  convince  men  that  tlie  princi- 
ple of  imperfection  and  of  freedom  can  be  applied  to  the 


246  BROWNING. 

formal  elements  of  a  poem,  it  ought  to  be  possible  to 
convince  them  that  it  can  be  applied  to  the  contents  of  a 
poem.  The  universal  feeling  of  our  imperfections  and 
the  universal  sense  of  our  spiritual  freedom  when  we 
betake  ourselves  to  the  deeper  levels  of  our  being,  ought 
to  be  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  truth  for  the  highest  poetic 
representations.  But  we  will  let  Browning's  superb  half- 
men,  his  Andreas  and  Cleons  and  Norberts  and  the  rest, 
with  their  aspirations  and  imperfections,  their  god-like 
powers  and  unsure  purposes,  their  faiths  diversified  by 
doubts,  with  their  half-free  souls  aspiring  to  be  more 
free,  answer  for  themselves.  These  characters,  better 
than  any  others  in  literature,  give  us  the  sense  both  of 
man's  spiritual  shortcomings  and  of  man's  spiritual  free- 
dom. 


CONCLUSION 


In  an  essay  on  "Reflex  Action  and  Theism"  Professor 
William  James,  to  whose  teachings  the  spirit  of  these 
pages  owes  not  a  little,  writes  as  follows :  "From  its 
first  dawn  to  its  highest  actual  attainments,  we  find  that 
the  cognitive  faculty,  where  it  appears  to  exist  at  all,  ap- 
pears but  as  one  element  in  an  organic  mental  whole,  and 
as  a  minister  to  higher  mental  powers, — the  powers  of 

will It  is  probable  that  to  the  end  of  time  our 

power  of  moral  and  volitional  response  to  the  nature  of 
things  will  be  the  deepest  organ  of  communication  there- 
with we  shall  ever  possess Certain  it  is  that  the 

acutest  theories,  the  greatest  intellectual  power,  the  most 
elaborate  education,  are  a  sheer  mockery  when,  as  it  of- 
ten happens,  they  feed  mean  motives  and  a  nerveless  will. 
And  it  is  equally  certain  that  a  resolute  moral  energ)',  no 
matter  how  inarticulate  and  unequipped  with  learning  its 
owner  may  be,  extorts  from  us  a  respect  we  should  never 
pay  were  we  not  satisfied  that  the  essential  root  of  hu- 
man personality  lay  there."  These  are  fitly  spoken 
words;  and  are  the  simple  truth.  The  fact  is  that  the 
essential  root  of  human  personality  lies  in  the  will.  It  is 
the  exercise  of  this  power  that  makes  us  men  and  God- 
like. It  is  this  power  that  we  rely  upon  and  draw  from 
all  tlie  days  of  our  lives.  It  is  the  power  by  which  we 
can  make  or  mar  the  beauty  or  worth  of  our  daily  living, 
in  the  lowly  walks  of  life,  or  in  the  highest  walks  of  life. 
It  is  the  power  by  which  we  face  and  select  alternatives 


248  CONCLUSION. 

and  so  far  determine  our  destiny.  We  have  had  alterna- 
tives before  us  as  children  and  shall  have  them  the  last 
days  of  our  lives;  and  thus  we  constantly  exercise  our 
wills.  The  power  of  will  is  the  central  power  of  person- 
ality. 

And  passion,  if  it  takes  on  the  form  of  love,  filial, 
or  parental,  or  conjugal  love,  love  for  home,  or  country, 
or  friends;  if  it  takes  on  the  form  of  devotion,  devotion 
to  a  cause,  a  principle,  or  truth,  or  right;  if  it  is  deep- 
seated  and  not  shallow,  central  and  not  peripheral,  sub- 
dued and  not  hysterical,  and  if  it  is  under  the  central 
power  of  the  will,  passion  is  one  of  the  worthiest  elements 
of  our  natures.  It  is  the  element  that  gives  zest,  mean- 
ing, tone,  color,  and  substance  to  life.  It  is  the  second 
great  power  of  personality.  There  are  two  things  we 
have  with  us  always — our  passions  and  our  wills. 

And  poetry,  more  than  science  or  philosophy,  poetry, 
which  ever  keeps  its  ear  close  to  the  common  heart  of 
humanity  and  its  common  joys  and  sorrows,  its  choices 
and  failures,  its  choices  and  successes,  enshrines  these 
experiences  in  the  substance  of  its  work.  It  awakens 
and  purifies  the  passions;  it  arouses  and  nerves  the  will. 
And  great  poetry,  which  is  great  art  and  creative,  enlarges 
the  volume  of  passion  and  will  and  energy  in  created 
characters,  and  effects  through  pity  and  terror  the  puri- 
fying of  our  passions  and  the  strengthening  of  our  wills. 

Morley  finely  says  of  Wordsworth :  "The  trait  that 
really  places  Wordsworth  on  an  eminence  above  his  poetic 
contemporaries,  and  ranks  him,  as  the  ages  are  likely  to 
rank  him,  on  a  line  just  short  of  the  greatest  of  all  time,  is 
his  direct  appeal  to  will  and  conduct."  A  similar  trait,  the 
appeal  to  will  and  a  sense  of  freedom  in  man,  also  ranks 
Browning,  as  the  ages  are  likely  to  rank  him,  just  short 


CONCLUSION.  249 

of  the  greatest  of  all  time.    And  Tennyson,  according  to 
the  gifts  that  were  given  him,  sang  nobly  and  well  of 

One  equal   temper  of  heroic   hearts, 

Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  in  will 

To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield.' 

Moreover,  the  fact  of  moral  responsibility  rests  di- 
rectly on  the  fact  of  volitional  and  spiritual  freedom. 
Moral  responsibility  is  exactly  commensurate  with  moral 
freedom,  and  both  have  their  roots  in  the  will.  Since 
freedom  and  responsibility  arise  from  the  same  source 
in  our  natures  aestheticians  can  never  successfully  sepa- 
rate freedom  in  art  from  the  responsibility  which  the 
fact  of  freedom  entails.  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  and 
Browning  respectively  look  their  share  of  responsibilities 
commensurate  with  the  moral  and  spiritual  freedom  to 
which  they  had  attained.  Each  came  as  a  teacher  as  well 
as  a  singer  to  his  generation.  Each  took  the  plain  man's 
view  that  a  man  is  as  responsible  for  what  he  says  in  po- 
etry as  for  any  other  act  of  life.  Each  held  that  of  the  aes- 
thetic strain  and  the  moral  strain  in  human  nature  the 
latter  is  the  deeper  seated  and  that  the  former  must  be 
grounded  in  the  latter.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the 
steady  moral  purpose  which  characterizes  the  efforts  of 
these  poets  helps  to  account  for  the  large  and  substantial 
output  of  work  of  each,  and  gives  their  works  a  solidity 
that  sets  them  apart  from  the  works  of  the  rest  of  the 
English  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

But  it  may  be  urged  that  the  sense  of  moral  respon- 
sibility in  these  poets  forced  them  to  give  expression  to 
moral  platitudes  that  are  detrimental  to  poetry.  It  must 
be  admitted  that  such  is  the  case  in  their  less  happy  mo- 
ments.    Should  the}',  then,  have  attempted  to  lessen  or 

^  "Ulysses." 


250  CONCLUSION. 

override  their  sense  of  moral  responsibility?  Certainly 
not.  Such  a  course  savors  distinctly  of  shallowness  and 
insincerity.  Out  of  weakness  these  poets,  in  their  happier 
moments,  perfected  strength, — 'the  strength  of  volition. 
For  itheir  volition,  when  intensive  and  penetrative,  and 
sustained  by  passion,  produced  a  strain  of  spiritual  free- 
dom and  moral  sublimity,  a  vision  of  a  higher  wisdom, 
in  their  poetry,  which  never  could  have  been  produced 
had  they  not  had  a  deep  sense  of  moral  responsibility. 

Wherever  the  will  is  vigorously  exercised  there  is 
always  a  healthy  glow  of  life.  There  is  reformation, 
growth,  and  expansion.  Where  it  is  not  vigorously  exer- 
cised there  is  lethargy,  retrogression,  and  degeneration. 
There  come  times  in  the  history  of  the  race  as  in  the  life 
of  an  individual  when  lassitude,  relaxation,  and  retrogres- 
sion seem  natural  and  inevitable.  But  they  are  seasons 
Ihat  do  not  abide  with  us  any  great  length  of  time.  They 
are  perhaps  only  seed  time  for  a  greater  harvest.  At  any 
rate,  the  tide  soon  turns  toward  the  strenuous  and  ardu- 
ous and  high  enterprise,  for  it  is  in  this  direction  that 
salvation  lies ;  and  the  call  of  our  greater  poets  is  not  in 
vain. 

But  if  the  social  conditions  are  normal,  as  the  tide 
rises  and  men  act  courageously  and  feel  the  strength  of 
their  wills,  they  feel  inevitably  the  need  of  a  higher  will 
than  theirs.  This  need  is  felt  increasingly  at  the  same 
ratio  that  the  strength  of  will  is  felt  increasingly.  When 
a  man  enacts  the  greatest  power  of  self-direction,  he  man- 
ifests the  strongest  spirit  of  self-surrender;  when  he  be- 
comes the  most  conscious  of  his  own  actual  and  individ- 
ual power  he  becomes  the  most  conscious  of  inexplica- 
ble and  indefinable  powers  within  him  and  around  him 
and  above  him..  Thus  in  his  highest  experiences  he  exer- 
cises    complete     self  -  direction     and     absolute     self  - 


CONCLUSION.  251 

surrender  at  one  and  the  same  moment.  This  is  a 
paradox,  but  one  of  the  deepest  and  truest  paradoxes  of 
life. 

When,  in  this  paradoxical  state  of  self-direction  and 
self-surrender,  the  will  does  its  work  intensely  and  in- 
wardly, it  makes  a  man  "aware  of  his  life's  flow,"  aware 
of  his  own  soul's  passion  and  freedom.  He  then  experi- 
ences the  power  and  freedom  of  creating,  and  the  joy 
of  living.  He  becomes  a  creative  artist,  with  a  divine 
function. 

But  this  intense  and  inner  experience  of  the  will  and 
the  passions,  giving  as  it  does  a  sense  of  freedom  to  the 
soul,  is  the  fountain  head  of  the  great  poetry  of  all  ages. 
The  experience  is  always  transcendental  and,  in  its  in- 
tenser  moments,  always  mystical.  Though  the  spirit  of 
transcendentalism  and  mysticism  is  often  disregarded  by 
the  lesser  poets,  it  is  universally  cultivated  by  the  greater 
poets  as  the  source  of  their  highest  inspiration.  This 
spirit  is  the  soul's  assurance  of  freedom,  and  the  love  of 
spiritual  freedom  is  as  old  as  the  race.  This  love  is  the 
prime  desire  of  all  races.  It  inspired  the  Hebrew  prophet 
and  the  Greek  rhapsodist;  it  inspired  the  blind  Milton  and 
the  greater  of  our  modern  poets.  Wordsworth,  the  mys- 
tic, found  the  universe  and  the  soul  of  man  filled  with 
the  power  of  spiritual  energy  and  freedom.  Browning, 
'  the  transcendentalist,  found  that  in  the  wills  and  passions 
of  men  there  was  free  and  creative  power  enough  to 
build  new  worlds.  And  Tennyson,  though  cautious  and 
critical  and  strongly  influenced  by  the  idea  of  impersonal 
law,  still  found  that  life  would  not  be  worth  living  if  one 
could  not  believe  that  the  soul  of  man  is  free  and  immor- 
tal. This  main  miracle  of  our  lives,  this  mystical  and 
transcendental  experience  of  spiritual  freedom,  is  neces- 
sary to  all  the  higher  inspirations  of  poetry. 


252  CONCLUSION. 

The  transcendentalism  and  mysticism  the  world  cares 
for  and  will  not  let  die  is  that  which  grips  and  moves  the 
mind.  The  chief  power  of  the  mind  which  it  affects 
is  the  will.  Its  mysteriousness  is  ineffective  if  it  does 
not  touch  the  will.  The  pure  transcendentalism  of  Shel- 
ley, for  example,  has  all  the  good  qualities  that  transcen- 
dentalism in  poetry  can  possess,  save  one.  The  abstract 
mysteriousness  of  Shelley  has  no  force  on  the  will.  It 
lacks  grasp  and  convincing  power.  For  this  reason  the 
poetry  most  characteristic  of  him  vvill  always  be  the  po- 
etry for  the  select  few.  The  mysterious,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  Wordsworth,  or  in  Tennyson,  or  in  Browning, 
connects  itself  deeply  with  the  volitions  of  the  soul.  It 
seizes  hold  of  men  not  merely  because  it  is  mysterious  or 
fascinating  but  because  it  forces  them  to  discover  them- 
selves on  the  deeper  levels  of  their  being.  It  unlocks  for 
them  their  own  hidden  energies  of  mind  and  soul,  and 
makes  them  aware  of  the  inheritance  of  spiritual  free- 
dom which  is  theirs.  And  this  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant functions  of  poetry. 

And  it  may  be  added  that,  since  this  inner  and  spirit- 
ual freedom  is  an  abiding  quality  in  human  nature,  poet- 
ry, which  alone  can  render  it,  is  a  thing  of  the  future 
as  well  as  of  the  past  and  the  present.  There  is  nothing 
inherent  in  our  social  progress  to  destroy  the  power  of 
poetry.  Our  social  progress  may  tend  to  change  the  out- 
ward forms  of  poetic  expression, — may  make  certain 
kinds  of  imagery  and  certain  forms  obsolete.  But  it 
cannot  destroy  or  change  the  inner  spirit  of  poetic  sub- 
stance. The  spirit  of  transcendentalism  and  mysticism 
is  not  dead.  The  sense  of  spiritual  freedom  in  the  race 
is  not  weakened.  The  power  of  its  spiritual  energy  is 
not  waning.     If  there  be  science,  it  shall  fail;  if  there  be 


CONCLUSION.  253 

philosophy,  it  shall  fail ;  fail  to  express,  with  intensity 
and  with  innerness,  the  fundamental  passions  of  the 
heart  and  volitions  of  the  soul.  These  always  have  been 
and  always  will  be  reserved  for  the  great  art  of  poetry. 
So  that  poetry  is  a  thing  of  the  future  as  well  as  of  the 
past  and  the  present. 

Though  many  minor  singers  exist  in  every  age  and 
generation,  poetic  geniuses  are  rare.  There  have  per- 
haps not  been  as  many  in  the  world  as  there  have  been 
centuries  of  human  history.  If,  therefore,  we  cannot 
at  the  present  time,  point  to  a  great  living  genius  of  poet- 
ry, let  us  not  suppose  he  has  forever  vanished  from  the 
earth.  It  is  reasonable  to  expect  that  within  a  century 
he  will  be  with  us  again.  And  when  he  does  come  he  will 
find  in  the  hidden  forces  of  man  and  the  world  and  in 
the  deeps  of  his  own  being  abundant  material  for  poetic 
expression.  He  will  find  that  neither  Wordsworth,  nor 
Tennyson,  nor  Browning,  nor  any  other  poet,  has  ex- 
hausted the  well  springs  of  moral  and  spiritual  life  to 
which  the  human  mind  has  access.  Let  us  hope,  there- 
fore, that  his  coming  may  be  soon.  Let  us  hope  even  that 
he  is  already  born  in  our  midst,  and  that  we  may  live  to 
see  him  vindicate  anew  the  immensity  of  the  future  of 
poetry : 

Ah,  that  brave 
Bount}'  of  Poets,  the  only  royal  race 
That  ever  was,  or  will  be,  in  this  world  ! 
They  give  no  gift  that  bounds  itself  and  ends 
r  the  giving  and  the  taking:  theirs  so  l)reeds 
r  the  heart  and  soul  o'  the  taker,  so  transmutes 
The  man  who  only  was  a  man  before, 
That  he  grows  godlike  in  his  turn,  can  give — 
He  also :  share  the  poets'  privilege, 
Bring  forth  new  good,  new  beauty,  from  the  old.' 


Browning,  "Balaustion's  .Xdventure." 


APPENDIX 

Page  II.  Note  i.  It  is  not  intended  in  this  book  to 
depreciate  the  vakie  of  emotions  in  poetry.  If  the  will 
is  the  first  power  of  personality  certainly  the  "emotions, 
chiefly  those  essential  and  eternal  in  the  heart"  are  a 
close  second.  But  the  will  and  the  emotions  are  comple- 
mentary to  each  other,  not  antagonistic.  The  will  pre- 
vents the  emotions  from  becoming  maudlin  and  the  emo- 
tions prevent  the  will  from  becoming  sterile.  The  emo- 
tions give  tone  and  color  and  substance  to  the  will  and  the 
will  gives  dignity  and  distinction  to  the  emotions ;  and 
the  two  together  constitute  the  most  important  powers 
of  personality  and  therefore  the  chiefest  material  for 
poetry. 

Page  II.  Note  2.  It  seems  that  in  life,  too,  as  in  po- 
etry, the  energy  of  will  is  a  more  vital  force  than  intel- 
lectual conceptions.  Professor  Dewey  in  his  Psycholog}', 
for  instance,  says :  '"There  is  possible  no  knowledge  with- 
out attention.  Attention  involves  the  discrimination  of 
sensations  from  each  other,  and  the  identification  of  some 
one  group  of  these  sensations  with  self — in  short,  an  act 

of  choice The  process  of  knowledge  is  a  process 

of  volition ;"  and  Professor  William  James,  as  quoted  in 
this  text  on  page  247,  says  that  the  cognitive  faculty 
is  but  one  element  in  the  larger  powers  of  will. 

Page  41.  Note  3.  Perhaps  tlie  most  favorite  words 
of  Wordsworth,  especially  during  tlie  period  of  his  great- 
est literary  production,  are  tlie  words  "motion"  and 
"gleam"  with  their  various  adjectival  and  verbal  forms, 


256  APPENDIX. 

together  with  words  of  kindred  meaning — words  at  once 
dynamic  and  volitional.  In  addition  to  the  examples 
given  in  the  text,  a  few  more  must  suffice: 

To  cut  across  the  reflex  of  a  star 

That  fled,  and,  flying  still  before  me,  gleamed 

Upon  the  glassy  plain. 

Even  then  I  felt 
Gleams  like  the  flashing  of  a  shield. 

And  add  the  gleam, 
The  light  that  never  was,  on  sea  or  land. 

Lighted  by  gleams  of  moonlight  from  the  sea 
We  beat  with  thundering  hoofs  the  level  sand. 

Now  is  crossed  by  gleam 
Of  his  own  image,  by  a  sunbeam  now 
And  wavering  motions  sent  he  knows  not  whence. 

Sounds  of  undistinguishable  motion — 

No  motion  but  the  moving  tide,  a  breeze — 

All  the  shadowy  banks  on  either  side 

Came  sweeping  through  the  darkness,  spinning  still 

The  rapid  line  of  motion. 

Ye  motions  of  delight  that  haunt  the  sides 
Of  the  green  hills. 

From  the  blessed  power  that  rolls 
About,  below,  above. 

No  motion  has  she  now,  no  force; 
She  neither  hears  nor  sees; 
Rolled  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course, 
With  rocks,  and  stones,  and  trees. 

Those  hallowed  and  pure  motions  of  the  sense — 

On  the  first  motion  of  a  holy  thought — 

And  all  the  tender  motions  of  the  soul — 


APPENDIX.  257 

Thou  Soul  that  art  the  eternity  of  thought 
That  givest  to  forms  and  images  a  breath 
And  everlasting  motion. 

Listen !  the  mighty  Being  is  awake, 
And  doth  with  his  eternal  motion  make 
A  sound  like  thunder —  everlastingly. 

This  list  might  very  easily  be  extended.  From  it  we  see 
that  Wordsworth,  in  a  very  pectiliar  sense,  attributes  vital 
movement,  not  only  to  all  the  objects  of  the  otiter  world, 
but  also  to  the  senses,  the  thoughts,  and  the  soul  of  man, 
and  even  to  God.  And  the  mere  act  of  pronouncing  re- 
peatedly the  words  "gleam"  and  "motion"  and  "roll"  in 
the  sense  Wordsworth  uses  them,  gives  a  healthy  and 
voluntary  thrill  to  the  soul. 

Page  70.  Note  4.  The  device  which  the  pre-existent 
idea  was  to  serve  was  no  doubt  that  of  giving  largeness 
of  movement  to  the  poem.  There  is  indeed  something  of 
epic  movement  in  it.  This  effect  is  produced  mainly 
by  the  device  of  conceiving  the  soul  as  existing  in  an  im- 
measurable past,  coming  "in  trailing  clouds  of  glory"  to 
the  present,  and  sweeping  through  the  present  into  the 
meastireless  future.  This  conception  produces  in  the 
reader  a  sense  of  vast  movernent  and  a  sense  of  the  su- 
periority of  the  soul  over  things  of  time.  Any  criticism 
that  ignores  Wordsworth's  explanation  and  makes  more 
of  the  pre-existent  idea  than  a  poetical  device  is  likely  to 
be  unsound. 

Page  124.  Note  5.  To  prove  that  this  point  is  really 
as  important  as  indicated  here  one  needs  only  to  turn  to 
the  testimony  of  the  "Memoir"  where  Free-will  is  spoken 
of  as  the  "main  miracle,  apparently  an  act  of  self-limi- 
tation by  the  Infinite,  and  yet  a  revelation  by  Himself  of 
Himself."  "Take  away  the  sense  of  individual  responsi- 
bility and  men  sink  into  pessimism  and   madness."  etc. 


258  APPENDIX. 

Vol.  I,  pages  316,  317,  etc.  Moreover,  there  are  many 
passages  in  Tennyson's  poetry  besides  those  quoted  in  this 
book  which  emphasize  the  importance  of  the  point,  but 
the  following  single  passage  from  Q^none  must  suffice 
as  illustration : 

My  vigor,  wedded  to  thy  blood, 
Shall  strike  within  thy  pulses,  like  a  God's, 
To  push  thee  forward  thro'  a  life  of  shocks. 
Dangers,  and  deeds,  until  endurance  grow 
Sinew'd  with  action,  and  the  full-grown  will, 
Circled  thro'  all  experiences,  pur«e  law, 
Commeasure  perfect  freedom. 

That  the  goddess  of  wisdom  should  pronounce  this  pas- 
sage adds  to  its  significance.  For  the  end  of  wisdom  is 
perfect  freedom  that  is  attained  by  the  power  of  endur- 
ance and  the  power  of  will  circling  through  all  experi- 
ences. 

Page  178.  Note  6.  This  and  many  other  quotations 
from  Browning  that  follow  are  taken  from  his  dramatic 
monologues.  It  would  certainly  be  wrong  to  identify 
the  mind  of  Browning  with  the  minds  of  some  of  the 
speakers  in  these  monologues,  as,  for  instance,  the  speak- 
er in  "My  Last  Duchess."  Yet  it  seems  not  to  be  wrong 
to  quote  from  such  a  poem  as  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra"  in  order 
to  state  an  attitude  of  mind  of  Browning.  This  difiference 
of  selection  seems  to  be  determined  by  two  principles  of 
criticism.  The  first  principle  is  that,  as  in  life  we  tend  to 
identify  a  man  with  his  best  deeds  and  his  solidest  think- 
ing, so  in  literature  we  tend  to  identify  the  poet  with  his 
greatest  and  noblest  characters,  or  at  least,  with  the  finest 
qualities  in  such  characters.  The  best  part  of  a  poet's 
mind  is  bequeathed  to  his  best  characters.  The  second 
principle  is  that  we  tend  to  identify  the  mind  of  a  poet 
with  the  ideas  that  recur  oftenest  in  his  work  as  a  whole. 


APPENDIX.  259 

We  do  this  not  only  because  they  recur  but  because  those 
that  do  recur  have  a  vitality  about  them  that  makes  us 
feel  that  they  are  characteristic  of  the  author.  I  have 
tried  to  use  these  principles  in  my  citations  from  Brown- 
ing's dramatic  monologues. 

Page  234.  Note  7.  Since  no  room  was  given  in  the 
main  discussion  to  Browning's  views  on  political  liberty  a 
word  may  be  said  about  them  in  this  note.  His  views 
were  individualistic  and  liberal.  They  are  well  summed 
up  in  the  lines  of  a  poem  written  in  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion, "Why  I  am  a  Liberal?" 

But  little  do  or  can  the  best  of  us: 
That  little  is  achieved  through  Liberty. 
Who,  then,  dares  hold,  emancipated  thus. 
His  fellow  shall  continue  bound?  Not  I, 
Who  live,  love,  labor  freely,  nor  discuss 
A  brother's  right  to  freedom.    That  is  "Why." 

This  is  intensely  personal,  and  one  wonders  why  Brown- 
ing did  not  have  a  greater  sympathy  for  Wordsworth's 
political  patriotism  which,  too,  was  intensely  personal  and 
at  bottom  very  much  like  Browning's.  What  Words- 
worth finely  says  of  Alilton  was  true  of  himself  and  of 
Browning: 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea : 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,   free. 

For  Wordsworth  there  was  one  decree  "that  by  the  soul 
only,  the  Nations  shall  be  great  and  free."  And  Brown- 
ing grounded  his  sense  of  political  freedom  on  this  same 
basis. 

Wordsworth,  however,  felt  there  were  many  radical 
and  liberal  movements  that  did  not  contribute  to  the  free- 
dom of  the  soul ;  and  to  such  movements  he  was  opposed. 
Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  hoped  that  larger  freedom 


260  APPENDIX. 

would  result  from  practically  every  liberal  political 
movement.  Here  the  differences  between  the  two  were 
so  great  that  the  younger  poet  was  unable  to  appreciate 
the  position  of  the  elder.  Wordsworth  was  a  conserva- 
tive, who  believed  that  movements  toward  political  free- 
dom must  be  of  a  fundamental  and  slow  growing  sort. 
Browning  was  a  liberal,  who  believed  that  such  move- 
ments must  be  aggressive  and  radical.  And  Tennyson, 
whose  views  have  been  discussed  in  their  proper  place, 
was  a  conservative-liberal,  who  expressed  ideas  adapted 
to  practical  politics.- 


INDEX 


"Abt  Vogler,"  i6,  26,  239. 

"Adolescence"   71. 

"Affliction  of   Margaret,"    102. 

"After-thought,"  49. 

"Ancient  Sage,  The,"  114,  130, 

138,    140,    152,    155.    158. 
"Andrea  del  Sarto,"  240,  241. 
"Answer  to  Verses  Addressed 

to  the  Poet,"  20. 
"A   Poet!— He   Hath   Put   His 

Heart  to  School,"  192. 
"Apologia,"  89. 
Arnold,  Alatthew,  23,   119,  120, 

123. 

B 

"Balaustion's  Adventure,"  253. 

"Bases  of  the  Mystic  Con- 
sciousness, The,"  97. 

Beaupuy,  54. 

"Bishop  Blougram's  Apologj'," 
179.  197,  198. 

"Borderers,  The,"  75. 

Brawne,  Fannie,  23. 

"Break,  Break,  Break,"  130. 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett 
190. 

Burns,  19,  22,  24,  120 

Byron,  33. 

"By  the  Fireside,"  186,  194.  210. 


Calvinistic  Creed,  156. 

Carlyle,  27,  120,  152,  157,  163, 
177,   181,   188. 

"Charge  of  the  Heavy  Brig- 
ade,   The,"    153. 


"Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade, 

The,"    10. 
Chaucer,    13. 
Chesterton,  189. 
"Cliilde   Roland,"  213. 
"Christinas  Eve,"  220,  223. 
"Cleon,"    239. 
Clough,   120,  220. 
"Comus,"  26. 
Corson,    125. 

D 
"Death  in  the  Desert,  A,"  184, 

197,  203,  228,  233. 
"De  Gustibus— ,"  185,  186. 
"De    Profundis,"    13,    124,    153, 

164. 
"Despair,"    156. 
De  Vere,  Aubrey,  42. 
Dewey,  255. 
Dowden,   160. 


"Easter  Day,"  120,  179,  186, 
195,  202,  213,  215,  216. 

"Elegiac  Stanzas,"  106,  109  . 

Emerson,  94. 

"Empedocles,"  119. 

"Epilogue  to  Asolando,"  187. 

"Epilogue  to  Dramatis  Pers- 
onae,"  219,  225. 

"Evelyn  Hope,"  230. 

"Excursion,"  10,  47,  49,  95. 

"Expositulation  and  Reply,"  76. 


"Fifine   at  the  Fair,"    199,  223, 

238. 
"Fountain,   The,"   59. 


262 


INDEX. 


"Francis      Furini,      Parleyings 

witli,"   183. 
French   Revolution,  33,  36,  37, 

53,  61,  ^6. 


"Garden  of    Proserpine,   The," 
118. 

H 

Hall,  G.  S.,  71 
Hallam,  Arthur,  127,  i8g. 
'Higher  Pantheism,  The,"   135. 
"Holy  Grail,  The,"  175. 
"Home-Thoughts,      from      the 

Sea,"  185. 
"House,"    228. 
Hutton,  43. 


"Idylls  of  the  King,"  157. 
"In  a  Balcony,"  205. 
"In  a  Gondola,"  204,205,  207. 
"In    Meni'oriam,"   25,    123,    124, 

126,    127,    131,    132,    136,    140, 

143,    150,    151,    152,    155,    157, 

159,  160,  161,  162,  171,  172. 
"Intimations    of    Immortality," 

64,  68,  131,  256. 
"It     Fortifies      My     'Soul     to 

Know,"  220. 
"Introduction  to  the   Study  of 

Robert    Browning's    Poetry," 

126. 


James,    William,    84,    212,    214, 

247,  25s. 
"James  Lee's  Wife,"  201,  203. 
Jeffrey,  72. 
Job,  Book  of,  126. 
Johnson,    E.,    239. 


K 

Keats,  23,  125. 
"King  Lear,"  245. 


Landor,  Walter  Savage,  188. 
"Last    Ride     Together,    The," 

184,  226,  230. 
Lockhart,    125. 

"Locksley  Hall,"   154,  160,  162. 
"Locksley    Hall,    Sixty    Years' 

After,"   154,   158,   162. 
"Love  Among  the  Ruins,"   185. 
Lowell,  95. 
"Lucy,"  105. 
"Luria,"  22},. 
"Lycidas,"  127. 
"Lyrical    Ballads,"    Preface   to, 

40. 

M 

Macaulay,    15,   '/2. 

"Making  of  Man,  The,"  149. 

"Masque  of  Alfred,"  20. 

"Maud,"   171. 

"Memoir,"   136,   138,  257. 

"Merchant    of    Venice,    The,'' 

180. 
"Michael,"    102. 

"Miller's  Daugliter,  The,"   121. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  188. 
Milton,  II,   13,  IS,  21,  25,  259. 
Morley,  26,  248. 
Myers,  35,  38. 

"My  Last   Duchess,"   239,   258. 
"My  Star,"  225. 
"Mystic,  The,"  133. 


N 


Newman,  88. 
"Nutting,"  79. 


O 


"Ode  to  Duty,'   iii,   114. 

"CEnone,"  148,  258. 

"Old     Pictures    in     Florence, 

215,  243,  245. 
"One  Word  More,"  227. 


INDEX. 


263 


"Palace  of  Art,  The,"  147. 

"Paracelsus,"  209,  222. 

"Paradise  Lost,"  11,  13,  14,  245. 

"Peele  Castle,"  106. 

"Peter  Bell,"  78,  79,  94. 

"Pippa    Passes,"  218. 

Plato,   16. 

"Poet,   The,"   133. 

"Poet  and  the  Caged  Turtle- 
dove, The,"  44. 

Pope,    123. 

"Pragmatism,"  212,  221. 

"Prelude,"  10,  24,  26,  33,  ;i6,  37, 
38,  43,  46,  48,  50,  51,  52,  53, 
54.  55,  56,  57,  58,  60,  63,  66, 
68,  80,  81,  82,  85,  91,  103,  108, 
no,    116. 

"Princess,  The,"   152,   158,    170. 

"Prospice,"    190,    196. 

R 

"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  186,  195. 

197,  198,   201,   207,   231,   239, 
258. 

Recejac,  E.,  96. 

"Recluse,  The,"  92. 

"Reflex  Action  and  Theism," 
247. 

"Resolution  and  Independ- 
ence,"  10. 

"Rime  of  the  Ancient  Marin- 
er, The,     99. 

"Ring  and  the  Book,  The,"  194. 

198,  203. 
"Rizpah,"    121. 
Ruskin,  171,  188. 


Santyana,  204. 

"Sartor  Resartus,"  28,  164. 

"Saul,"  201,  208,  219,  239,  240. 

Scott,  99. 

"Self  E>eception,"  119. 

Shakespeare,   29,   97,    103,    173, 

181.  206,  227. 
Shelley,  27,  33. 
"She  Was  a  Phantom,"  41. 


"Sordello,"    202. 

"Statue    and    the    Bust,    The," 

202,  217. 
Stedman,  83. 
Stephen,  60,  70. 
Svvedcnborg,  88. 
Swinburne,  118. 


"Tables  Turned,  The,"  76. 
"Tears,  Idle  Tears,"   130. 
Thomson,  20. 
"Tintern  Abbey/'  27,  36,  40,  74, 

82. 
"To  a  Highland  Girt,"  104. 
"To  My  Sister,"  76. 
"To  the   Cuckoo,"    100. 
"To  the  Duke  of  Argyll,"  148. 
"Transcendentalism,"    236. 
"Tree  of  Liberty,  The,"  21. 
"Triumph  of  Life,  The,"  27. 
"Troilus  and  Criseyde,"  13. 
"Two  Poets  of   Croisic,  The," 

210. 
"Two   Voices,    The,"    113,    136, 

140,  144,  145. 
Tyndall,   138. 

U 
"LHysses,"  121,  127,  249. 

V 

Van  Dyke,  125. 

"Varieties  of  Religious  Exper- 
ience,"  84. 
"Vision  of  Sin,  The,"  170. 

W 

"Wages,"   159. 

"Whv  I  am  a  Liberal?",  259. 

"Will"    158. 

Wordsworth,   Dorothy,  35. 

Y 

"Yarrow  Linvisited,"  67. 
"You  Ask  Me,"  147. 
Young,  20. 
"Youth   and   Art,"   202. 


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